


The Conquest of Spaces Expanding Between You and Me

by quixotesque



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Past Identity Loss, Past Memory Alteration, Rough Sex, post-STID
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:31:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixotesque/pseuds/quixotesque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Khan gathers up his disused voice and only rasps, "Why."</p><p>Kirk still does not blink. "We need your help," he says with little emotion.</p><p>Khan's mouth moves on an impulse of its own. It curls and makes one harsh, jagged noise after another, his throat remembering once again what it is to laugh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write a post-STID max 5k fic. Obviously that worked out. I'm deeply sorry for the mini-essay directly below, but it's necessary for the fic to make sense. 
> 
> This story incorporates some elements from the IDW's Khan comics that are meant to be compatible with STID. Tbh, it's a strange piece of work, but I cherry-picked stuff from it anyway and so, for the benefit of those of you who haven't read the comics, the borrowed elements are: 
> 
> \- Khan's background as a crippled slum orphan. His fellow Indian Augments are also slum orphans, so instead of being people created in a lab, they're all abducted and then extensively modified through various procedures. A happy childhood, clearly.
> 
> \- Names of Khan's associates: Ericssen, the Augment who ruled Europe, and one of Khan's followers, Malik, who is never explicitly stated to be Khan's second-in-command but I gave him that position. The rest of his crewmembers I made up, building on the idea that his 72 would specifically be from the same Augment School thingamajig as him in India. 
> 
> \- Alexander "The 'A' Is For 'Asshole'" Marcus tampering with Khan's memory to make him believe he was always Agent Extraordinaire~ John Harrison from the moment he wakes up from cryo-stasis and using facial reconstruction/vocal chord manipulation to change him physically enough to support this deception (hence a Khan who looks white). Khan eventually recovers his memories during a mission on Qo'noS, but everything goes wrong anyway because of course it does. 
> 
> \- Khan has a trial where he basically renounces the court and is like lol you're all spineless, just throw back me back into cryo, you can't do shit with me anyway. Also, he's clearly been caught up with everything that has happened since Spock knocked him out at the end of the film, so he's not much of a RAGING BALL OF INFERNO anymore. Still hates everyone, though. 
> 
> \- Kirk and Spock attend his trial, so they both hear Khan's lifestory and his version of events, though Jim ultimately remains unsure whether or not Khan is telling the truth. 
> 
> And that's everything to do with the comics! Please hover your cursor over foreign words to see the translation, though I will limit the number of foreign words I use. (BUT DON'T QUOTE ME ON THAT.)
> 
> Many, _many_ thanks to and much love for Ari and Tree for letting me ramble on at them endlessly about this fic and also for everything beta. 
> 
> The first chapter is only Part 1 of the fic and the whole fic in general isn't very action-based despite the premise of a Klingon-Federation war (the day I can write decent action is not today, extreme sadface), but I hope you enjoy nonetheless! So, without further ado, FULL STEAM AHEAD.

Oblivion lasts for a short eternity.

Consciousness returns to Khan in strangely shaped fragments – indistinct husks of sounds and a brightness slowly permeating through the darkness of his closed lids. He reaches out to pull it all together, feeling uncentred, a creature fallen off of his own axis and into a world also tipping away from its designated course. The noises around him grow louder, clearer. Voices murmur overheard and something hums steadily.

A machine, an engine. A ship.

The disorientation is quick to vanish after that, his body suddenly pulsing alight with full cognisance and power like a hibernating system slamming back into life all at once.

He recognises the voices, half-wishing he did not, and when McCoy utters his name again, Khan opens his eyes to stare up into too bright light that can never blind him anyway. His body shifts slightly, encounters resistance. Tight bands cling to his wrists and ankles, the metal faintly warm against his skin.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” McCoy says gruffly. The lines of his face are haggard, haunted by solemnity. They wear the expression of a man who has done the forbidden and summoned a death god back into the world.

Kirk is no less sombre, standing beside McCoy with an unyielding set to the bones of his face. He watches Khan without blinking, his eyes hard and vivid like jewels.

Khan gathers up his disused voice and only rasps, "Why."

Kirk still does not blink. "We need your help," he says with little emotion.

Khan's mouth moves on an impulse of its own. It curls and makes one harsh, jagged noise after another, his throat remembering once again what it is to laugh.

+

They stand in front of him like an execution squad: Kirk, Spock, and then a row of armed security officers. Khan remains shackled on the bio-bed, clasped to it by handcuffs that cannot truly keep him although he pretends they can. He holds himself perfectly still and watches them in return, unconcerned by the glinting weapons. Their wariness pleases him on a base level; it seems they've learnt a predator remains a predator even when he is in chains.

Kirk speaks first. He tells Khan that it has been three years since he sank back into cryo-stasis and almost two since war broke out between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. He tells him that his crew is aboard the _Enterprise_ , sleeping safely in their cryo-tubes. He tells him that in return for their assistance, Starfleet is willing to allow Khan and his people a two-year probationary period on New Vulcan before relocating them onto an uninhabited M-class planet to call their own.

Khan almost laughs again. "Always a war," he says instead. "Either the threat of one or the reality of it."

Kirk and Spock regard him closely. Their faces look the same and yet older, changed in subtle ways and fatigued. Healing bruises dot a curve from Kirk's temple to his jaw like a band of sickly flowers. Spock's hands are now hidden behind his back but Khan has already seen the bandages.

"Your actions on Qo'noS three years ago acted as a catalyst," Spock says, his voice impassive and yet embedded with an accusation all the same. Though he and Kirk stand an equal distance away from Khan, a subtle tilt to Spock's form positions him slightly in front of Kirk, a shield ready to slip out at a moment's notice.

Vulcans are deliberate in their movements, but there is emotion in this small angling of Spock's body, a protective edge, and Khan wonders if Spock is even conscious of it.

"As did yours, Mr. Spock," he replies smoothly. He remembers seizing that skull between his hands, wanting to fracture its walls, crush the brain into a bright pulpy mess, and feels vague disappointment that he didn't manage it. "But an inevitability is just that: an inevitability. In the end, Starfleet brought this upon itself when it failed to notice its own corruption. Had I not killed him, Alexander Marcus would be celebrating right now."

"He would be, yeah," Kirk says, "but you did kill him, so that's not what matters. What matters is that we can't see an end to this war any time soon – not one where Earth survives, anyway – and we need one."

"You call on me of all people to help bring it about."

"You're angry, I know," Kirk says and Khan raises a mocking eyebrow, _do you really_ , because the rage is a furious sun still sitting at his core, burning and diffusing into the rest of his body until his bloodstream teems with it, "and you know what? So am I. Because I sure as hell didn't want to wake you back up, but we're running out of options and out of time. We're not Marcus. We're not going to threaten you into helping us. We're just—" He stops. His lips press tightly together, a reluctant, bloodless line. 

Khan waits. He can see it in the fisting of Kirk's hands, in the fact that he is here, in front of Khan, and Khan is awake to see it, but he wants the satisfaction of hearing Kirk say the word. 

"Desperate."

"Yes," Khan says bluntly. "Clearly, you are. Desperate enough to supposedly trust me. And what, exactly, is it that you want me to do for you? Enhance your ship? Your entire fleet? Make more weapons? Or do you want my people and I to be the weapons this time?"

" _No_. No, we don't want you to be our weapons, we want you to be our allies. There's a difference. We're giving you a choice. Don't get me wrong, this isn't forgiveness for what you did, but this can be a way for you to start making amends. You'll need to if you want a shot at living peacefully with your people after this is all over."

"Forgive me if I remain unconvinced that Starfleet will honour any agreement to allow us unimpeded freedom."

Spock says, "You yourself have dishonoured previous agreements."  

"You gave me no reason to honour them."

"Now you will have ample. The saying on Earth, I am told, is that trust runs both ways."

"You two can argue over that another time," Kirk cuts in firmly. He takes a step closer towards Khan and stands there with a sense of immovability to him like a mountain encased in flesh, his boots dug into the floor, prepared to remain for all eternity until he is granted his wish. "Tell me you don't see that this is the chance you've been looking for. You can do something other than sleep forever in a cryo-tube. You can rebuild your lives." Gently, with the quiet confidence of a man who knows he is landing the killer blow, he adds, "You can finally have a place to call home again."

Khan smiles slowly. Home. Such a potent word, filled with a kind of music that surreptitiously infiltrates and enraptures before it can be silenced. "Very good, Captain," he drawls languidly. "An effective tactic you have there."

"It's not a tactic. It's the truth."

"Is that so." Khan appraises him for a long moment, searches for any hint of cleverly hidden artifice. He finds other things, instead: a mess of thinly concealed frustration and urgency, the humiliation in asking an enemy for help and the solid determination to do so anyway. These things, Khan understands. In this way, he and Kirk are alike – family above all else.

His eyes slide beyond Kirk, beyond the guards, towards the door. Somewhere on this ship is his crew and he is not with them. "I want to see my people," he says and the tense line of Kirk's shoulders eases somewhat.

Spock moves forward, reaching for Khan's shackles. "They are currently monitored by Dr. McCoy.  I will escort you personally."

Khan ignores Spock's measured movements and watches Kirk instead.

Watches those shoulders regain their burden, a glacial hostility creeping into Kirk's face, his brow turning stern, his voice growing rougher as he says, "I shouldn't have to tell you that if you try _anything_ , if you take advantage of this to harm any of my crew—" He lets the warning settle in the air, a dagger pointed at Khan's chest.

Khan holds his gaze, indifferent, until Kirk finally looks away.

+

There is no dreaming in cryogenic sleep, only a deep submersion into nothingness. If Khan had dreamt, then it might have been of this moment, of standing close to his people, feeling their heartbeats pulsate in time with his like a voice shared between their bodies, an echo ingrained deep. Here, next to them, his anger calms, slipping down some hidden well and curling at the bottom to slumber for a while. Here, his mind quietens to a content hum.

The cryo-tubes are placed in neat rows. He walks from the first to the last, glancing inside each one, hand touching the glass surfaces. In London, following the recovery of his memories, he had prowled the lengths of his sparse apartment, reciting all seventy two names as if they were Vedic chant, sacred on his tongue, and now the names fall in easy streams from his mouth once more.

Peering into the final cryo-tube, Khan pauses. Malik's face has the smooth stillness of a statue, a stone Pharaoh gazing out over sand dunes, calm and unreadable in his repose. Khan wants to see that face shift from its placidity. They are meant for better things than to sleep the sleep of Endymion and he can feel it, all the possibilities, like a storm gathering in his veins, a charge building up inside his atoms. His people will adapt. They will observe and listen and touch until they have this new age imprinted in their fingertips and then they will take it apart in their minds, reconfigure it in a multitude of combinations, futures better or worse.  

Kirk spoke of a choice, but Khan knows there is none. If he is returned to his sleep and the Federation lose this war, he and his people will die as collateral damage, weak and defenceless in their sleep as the slum children they once were. He cannot let them. Their extinction, if it comes, will not come this way.

His voice is loud and clear, heavy with resolution, when he directs it towards the entrance, where McCoy has been standing silently all this while. "Tell Kirk I accept."

+

War is like a game of chess. Khan sits in his new quarters and visualises the tiered tri-d board, situating the pieces according to the battle reports glowing on the screen of his PADD.

The figures are unsurprisingly dismal. The Federation is a haemorrhaging body spilling blood at every juncture, its heart gasping for breath within an increasingly fragile rib cage. Three years ago, Khan would have reached out to wrap his hand around that heart, would have pressed down until the tenuous, straining pulse stuttered to a stop and it sat inanimately in his palm like a fruit. A sacrifice to ancient gods he never believed in. Today, he must cup his fingers around it, safeguard its delicate song. The irony pulls at his lips.

Sometime later, his line of thought is broken by the chime of the door and Kirk walks inside when Khan grants permission. He comes to a halt two feet away and speaks without preamble, "Scotty's most likely still ranting about how much it physically hurts him to give you access to the ship's engineering system, but he's agreed to do it." His voice is light – deliberately so, Khan suspects – but his body held carefully, alert, poised for violence.

Khan looks at Kirk's wrists. His ribs, his clavicle, his throat. His skin that will tear as smoothly as flowers and his bones that will snap as cleanly as twigs. The human body is a fragile construct, even more so beneath hands like Khan's. He could so easily have Kirk dismantled like a puzzle on the floor. "That is very generous of him."

The false lightness in Kirk's tone evaporates. "Don't make me regret this, Khan."

"I would say the same to you, Kirk." Khan gestures to the thin, black bracelet coiled around his wrist as if a tattoo. "A pretty piece of jewellery, this."

"We may need your help but we're not stupid. You'll get used to the tracker in time."

"McCoy said to consider it a test. If I did not take it apart, it would only demonstrate my willingness to cooperate."

"I wouldn't say he's wrong."

"And your admiralty? What do they say? I take it you've spoken to them by now."

"They're expecting regular updates from me and results from us both, from our crews."

"I'm sure they are," Khan says. And then, after a quiet, sardonic noise, "Are you afraid of me, Captain?"

Kirk scoffs. "Don't flatter yourself."

"Then why stand so far away? Do you expect me to attack you now that we're alone and I wear no restraints?"

"More like I'm trying to hold back the urge to punch you and I might not manage it if I stand any closer."

"You'd feel as little satisfaction as you did when you tried it the first time," Khan says dismissively. "I was under the impression that we've agreed on some sort of détente for the time being."

"Why do you think I'm holding myself back in the first place?" Kirk crosses his arms over his chest and nods at the PADD in Khan's hand. "Those the battle reports we gave you?"

"Yes, and they illustrate an entirely sad state of affairs." Khan doesn't allow a response, picking up another different strand of conversation entirely. "I see that Section 31 has been dismantled."

Kirk's tiny smile is tight and untrue. "Nothing really stays classified with you around, does it? I thought the subject would come up sooner rather than later. Yeah, Section 31's gone. I know because I was part of the team that made sure of it."

"Am I supposed to believe that Starfleet allowed you to be involved without any fuss?"

"Oh, there was plenty of fuss. I just didn't take no for an answer. It's not like I had anything else to do while my ship was being repaired."

"And you're confident that every facet of the organisation, everything I created, was destroyed?"

"As far as we know, we got everything. Everyone. Didn't crush their heads, which might be disappointing for you, but they're sure as hell not going to ever see the light of day again."

"Good." Khan thinks of the cage they had set him in, the cages they sit in now, and rich, near vindictive streams of satisfaction course through him. "Ironic that a Dreadnought would have been particularly useful at this point in time."

"Ironic," Kirk repeats flatly. "I didn't think anyone could've stomached the sight of another one, not after what you did with the _Vengeance_ in San Francisco, the number of people you killed there."

"Starfleet Headquarters was my sole target. That the engines were compromised and the _Vengeance_ 's course shifted from its intended trajectory was due to Commander Spock's ploy with the torpedoes."

Kirk's jaw clenches. He swallows and seems to need a moment to formulate words. "I never got to ask you at the time, but knowing afterwards that your crew was always alive, did you – _do_ you regret what you did? Even just a little bit?"

"Regret is a useless emotion. I haven't felt it often."

"But you have felt it?"

"Not in relation to what you are hoping. If it's a confession of remorse you want from me, then I'm afraid you won't be getting one. I kill when necessary. I don't see why I should regret what is necessary."

A long beat of silence.

Kirk doesn't have a face naturally given to concealing its effusive emotions; there is nothing of the impassivity Spock has mastered or the effortless blank masks Khan frequently wears. That he would even make the attempt at burying his reaction is interesting in its own right, but Khan sees the gritted teeth, the simmering anger that is a near-cousin of Khan's own.

"It was _necessary_ for you to take all those innocent lives?"

"It was necessary to avenge my people, forgotten as they were by that world. Your Vulcan should not have deceived me. He should not have thought that there wouldn't be consequences."

Kirk aims that unblinking, relentlessly focused stare at him again, says, "You're a monster," with a hollow-sounding calm.

Khan finds it a predictable and trite response. Wilfully blind humanity could never understand that its monsters were never in a separate, distinct category, but bred within them, from them, like clockwork. "And yet here you are, asking me for my help. Here you are standing in front of me, because it is the blood McCoy stole from me that revived you three years ago. You owe your life to this monster, Captain."

"No, I only balanced the scale. The damage you did to my ship was what led to my death in the first place, so it's only fair, isn't it, that your blood brought me back. Logical, as Spock would say."

"Fair?" Khan rumbles, ice in his breath. "Do not speak to me of what is _fair_." He finally sets the PADD aside. It is a delicate thing; he would be displeased to break it so soon after receiving it. "Scintillating as this conversation is, I highly doubt you came here to discuss morality with me."

Kirk inhales deeply and visibly reasserts some kind of order onto himself. "I wanted to talk about your crew. Bones told me that you're going to start waking them tomorrow morning. I'd like to be there, at least for the beginning."

"Aren't you allowed to go wherever you choose on your own ship?"

"They're your people."

The edge of Khan's mouth lifts. "You call me a monster, but also feel obliged to respect my wishes when it comes to my crew. Such an urgent need you have to be a good man."

"Should I take that as a yes, then?" Kirk says impatiently.

"Go ahead."

"Spock's already coming up with a schedule to help them out with learning everything on the job. We don't exactly have the luxury of a lot of time, but—" Kirk frowns. "We're pretty much waking them up and throwing them into a war three hundred years in the future. Even super-humans must struggle a little in adjusting to the brave new world."

"Soldiers are useless if they cannot adapt quickly and we are among the best soldiers you will ever find. We were raised for war. It hardly matters which one it is."

"I'll have to take your word for it," Kirk says, though his frown does not entirely disappear. "They're going to have to listen to my orders while they're on this ship. Will they have trouble with that?"

"They'll do what is required of them," Khan states blandly.

"But they won't be happy about it. This is going to be like some old Greek play, isn't it? Where you're their rightful king and I'm the usurper?"

"A rather melodramatic comparison, even if it isn't completely inaccurate."

"Well, let's just hope nobody gets assassinated in this one." Rubbing the side of his face where the skin is still untarnished, Kirk turns to leave.

Khan would rather not stop him, but he knows he must. Pushing aside his reluctance, he calls out and Kirk halts even if he doesn't turn to face Khan again. "You must remember that everything I did, I did for my crew, but the actions themselves – they were mine and mine alone. Despise me as much as you want, but do not punish my people for what you hold against me."

Kirk glances over his shoulder sharply. "I had no intention of doing that, even if I can't guarantee that my crew will be very fond of them, either. Yours weren't exactly saints three hundred years ago, were they? But we're all stuck in the same boat now and I trust my lot to put aside any grudges they have and do what is right. We're professionals." 

"I'll have to take your word for it," Khan echoes. "Look at that, Captain – we're trusting each other already."

"So we are," Kirk mutters and walks away.

Khan turns to his PADD again. He works and waits until alpha shift arrives and, with it, his return to Sickbay.

+

"Let me talk to him first," he had said and so they are. Kirk and McCoy linger like shadows in his periphery as Khan watches Malik slowly wake. He thinks to himself: my brother will not recognise me. My people will not recognise me.

His face is not the face they have always known. It is too pale, too angular, the cheekbones too diamond sharp and the eyes the wrong shade, colder than they have ever seen it. The alien voice housed in his throat will stir no memories, no sense of comforting familiarity. They will look at him with suspicion. They will look at him and not see the Khan that once was, but an impostor in his place.

He speaks to Malik anyway, low and measured, guiding and soothing him as he resurfaces from that too quiet, too still, cocoon-like world. Khan is not a gentle man but he approaches something close to it at times, a peculiar near-kindness that blooms despite all odds, a rare flower in strange soil. For a breathless moment, he hates that he must expose this part of himself in front of Kirk and McCoy, but then Malik reaches out like a blind man, hand shifting towards Khan – in instinct, Khan realises, and his anger is forgotten.

"My liege," Malik murmurs, voice soft and scratchy, bearing so much history in its cracks. His disoriented gaze shifts unseeingly across the ceiling. "You sound so different."

A relief too dense to speak through settles in Khan's throat. Something of him, some fragment existing too far deep within him to be affected by the hands of change, still speaks to Malik even now.

Malik pushes himself upright. He blinks once and his eyes – so dark, almost black, like Khan's had been once – regain their clarity at last. They sweep across the Sickbay with a soldier's curiosity, running over the five other bodies sleeping in nearby bio-beds, over Kirk and McCoy. Over Khan, where they remain fixed.

"Tell me," Khan says, like he used to.

Malik tilts his head to the side, coldly inquisitive. A lock of his long, brown hair falls forward, brushing against his square jaw. "You speak like someone I know. I would recognise it anywhere. Your voice is not quite the same as his, but the words are and I hear it like a familiar chord, the way only he talks."

"What if I said that I am him? That I am Khan?"

"I would say prove it.”

A challenge, steeped in distrust where there ordinarily wouldn't be any.

Khan answers it readily, thinking of the unknowable, endless sky that had stretched over the shores of Botany Bay and how Malik had gazed up at it, pensive and far away, impervious to the lashing wind. "The night before we left Earth, you looked up at the sky at Botany Bay and told me that our flight reminded you of something you once read. A poem about cranes. You said, _pani khojte / dur-dhesavar so ae the ve_." Almost odd-sounding in this cut-glass voice, but his native language still leaps easily off Khan's tongue, flowing light and warm, Indian sunshine in his mouth.

Malik stares. His lips part just slightly, the only concession to his surprise. He says nothing and the silence gains weight around them like an oncoming storm, pressing down on Khan's shoulders.

Malik stares, until: " _Pani khojte / dur-deshavar tak jana tha unhe_."

"That water might now be in sight," Khan says.

Malik's head abruptly turns towards Kirk and McCoy, eyes narrowing, measuring, scrutinising, and then just as quickly, his attention falls onto Khan once more. "We are still in space, aren't we. In the future. What year is it?"

"The year is now 2262 and we are aboard the starship _Enterprise_."

"More than three hundred years. Then how can I be certain that this isn't a trick? That you are not of some other species, one capable of taking another's memories? _Khan's_ memories?"

Bittersweet pride flares inside Khan's rib cage. Malik is asking the right questions. "I think you already know the answer, Malik. You can smell it, can't you."

The answer comes slow, but it comes. "They," Malik tips his head towards Kirk and McCoy, "smell human, but you, you carry Khan's scent. The scent of our people."

"These things cannot be so easily manufactured."

"No," Malik admits. "They cannot."

Khan looks down at Malik's hand, at the fingers that had sought Khan out in reflex. "Even if your senses give you conflicting answers, there seems to be a place in you that still recognises me. I want you to listen to that part of you, to trust it."

Malik looks over Khan's face, over his body, like it is a picture he can make no sense of, an equation he cannot reverse-solve. The suspicion slowly seeps out of him in favour of confusion and beyond that confusion, muted horror that Khan pretends not to see. "My liege, what have they done to you?"

"A question for later," Khan says. "These days, I prefer my name. I doubt our new allies would be willing to use my old title anyhow."

Malik's expression smoothes itself out into a clear slate. He resettles his eyes onto Kirk and McCoy, subjecting them to another evaluation. Khan finally pays them a glance of his own and finds them particularly bleak-faced, troubled by something he can only guess at.

Kirk waits for Khan's discreet nod before offering a hand for Malik to shake. His weak smile palpably lacks the knife-sharp edge he reserves for Khan. "Welcome to the _Enterprise_ , Malik. I'm Captain James Kirk and this is Dr. Leonard McCoy. Unfortunately, we're not meeting under the best of circumstances."

Malik places his hand neatly in his lap once he lets go. "What circumstances are we meeting in? And this bracelet around my wrist, what is its purpose?"

"War, I'm afraid," McCoy says with the usual grim set to his mouth. "And that'd be a tracker. You're going to have to wear it for a while. It's something of a – safety precaution."

Malik's arched eyebrow asks _whose safety, mine or yours_ , but his mouth only says, "Always a war," and Khan can't help the slight lift of his lips, the sweet solace he feels at the return of a like mind.

"Not a great first impression, I admit," Kirk says, "considering what we're going to ask of you. You probably have a lot of questions, too, about who we are and everything that's happened since you went into cryo-sleep."

"I do." Malik adds nothing more, his silence pointed.

Kirk takes it with good grace. He smiles again, polite from edge to edge. "Well, I wasn't expecting you to trust us right off the bat, so if you'd rather ask Khan the things you want to know, then I suppose that's what we'll do."

"You'll get your answers in due time," Khan says. "I'll explain everything once all of you are awake."

"I see only five others here. Where is the rest of our crew?"

"We're waking you in small groups," McCoy replies. "Your vitals are, to no one's surprise, more than perfect, so you can help if you like. It'll sure get things moving faster."

Malik swings his legs off the bio-bed without another word, lifting himself up to face Khan. Not even three hundred years of sleep and the sterile air of Sickbay has managed to kill the woody scent of frankincense that perpetually drifts from his dusky skin.

Khan murmurs, "It is good to have you awake again," but makes no other move, opting to wait and see what Malik will do next.

Malik straightens his shoulders, his spine, stands tall and proud as he has always done. He looks at Khan unwaveringly, a look that would be unreadable to others but not to Khan, who can still deftly translate the subtleties of Malik's expressions.

Wordlessly, Malik draws himself closer. Holds out his hand.

Khan takes it without hesitation and together, they perform a gesture as familiar as breathing, their fingers gliding in opposite directions, over the wrists and to the forearms, where they curl in a firm clasp.

"It is good to finally be awake, brother," Malik says, his small smile sitting like a secret at the corner of his mouth.

Khan smiles back. There is an entire symphony in that word.

+

Halfway through, Kirk approaches him. Khan sees it coming, having caught the quick glances Kirk has already thrown his way, and he silently breaks away from Malik and Vidya, leaving them to their conversation.

Kirk, strangely enough, seems thoughtful. The obdurate, surly edges his face tends to adopt around Khan are sanded down, softened into a midpoint that is neither gentle nor harsh. Seeing Khan waiting expectantly, he opens his mouth to speak only to promptly close it again.

When the odd silence between them persists, Khan breaks it. "If you've lost your voice, Captain, Dr. McCoy is the one you need, not me."

Kirk narrows his eyes slightly but only for a moment. "I just wanted to say," he begins, slow and haltingly, but once more fails to follow through, silencing himself. The next moment brings another stumbling attempt, "I forgot. Forgot that you," before he gives up with a small, defeated sigh, a little slump of his head.

Khan understands, regardless. His brain has already slotted in the missing words, finishing the sentences, articulating what Kirk cannot and it becomes quickly apparently what he is looking at, what that perplexing, mild expression of Kirk's means.

 _Pity_.

The sight of it lodges in Khan's gut like a poisoned dart. It yanks at the dark, terrible things that creep quiet and eternal in his chest, hungering to pull them out into the open where their darkness can consume the light.

Kirk begins to frown. Begins to say, "Wait, I'm—" but Khan is already turning away. He has no desire to respond and it is time to wake Shakti into the new century.

+

His crew file into the large lounge room, gathering before him. Khan looks over them as they talk amongst themselves and feels a sense of peace finally settle into his restless blood, feels his restless blood settle into his body as if it's been sitting in all the wrong channels all this time.

"You have the look of a man who has finally achieved his dream," Malik remarks, staying towards the front as is his wont. His hair is neatly tied back, lending a more refined edge to his straight nose and firm jaw-line, and he wears the same black, nondescript clothes as Khan, no hint of a Starfleet insignia on their chests.

"Those words are more fitting than you know. I didn't think this day would truly come, the way it has been snatched from my hands too many times."

Vidya, lean and beautiful as a wolf, asks, "By whom?" and the two words cut precisely through the hum of conversation, his crew turning sharp and intent like a pack of hunters suddenly sensing danger.

So, Khan tells them. The words come easily enough, a long tide that paints out the chaos of that wretched year. The devastation and fury. The twisted, vertiginous game of losing them, finding them, losing them, finding them again.

His crew is silent throughout, their faces clean of judgement. Without shame, he admits, "In my rage and grief, I would have razed Starfleet and that entire world to the ground," and sees tacit agreement spread remorselessly across those quiet faces. "If I could not save you, then I would at least avenge you. I would at least have that."

Malik's jaw moves, the grind of his teeth slow and subtle. There is a cold distance to his eyes that Khan has seen many times before, a distance that says he is imagining unholy things, things better left unsaid. "We would have done the same in your place," he says when he slips out of his thoughts, "and we would have done the same for you."

Khan nods. He already knows. This is how they love if they ever do – dangerously, wholly, infinitely.

"It is fortunate," Vidya says, light as the scrape of a knife over tender skin, "for Alexander Marcus that he is already dead and safe from the rest of us."

"It is also fortunate for him that I only had time enough to do nothing more than crush his head." While Khan has never been particularly interested in prolonging a man's death, he thinks an exception could have been made.

Vidya's mouth twists in disgust. "And now we must help Starfleet in order to secure a future for ourselves."

"There is no other way forward. We are travellers from an antique land, an antique time, with no place to call our own and we are sorely in need of one, if only to strengthen our own position in this new order. This won't be easy. Even when this war comes to an end, we'll have to tolerate two years on a Federation planet before we can settle on one of our own."

From the back, almost hidden from sight by the bulk of Rahul's arm, Lakshmi throws out, "A two-year period to ensure what, exactly? That we stay in line? That we have good intentions? Or," her smile is as sardonic as it is contemptuous, "is it to _rehabilitate_ us?"

"There will be no rehabilitation," Khan says with the same scoffing derision. "I told them as much during my trial. No, I expect they want reassurance that we'll maintain our co-operation when our own survival no longer depends on it. They'll need time as well, to heal and to search out a habitable planet. Kirk tells me that they have not found one yet."

"Not to mention they'll want to use that time to find an effective weapon against us." Priyanka frequently carries a roguish look about her, her mouth inclined towards devilish smirks and facetious remarks, but there is no sign of it now, not in the hand curled into a fist at her side or the blankness with which she looks at Khan. "Back then, the rebels found a way to kill us but it seems enough time has passed that their weapon has been lost. Forgotten. It's inevitable that another will replace it."

Arjun, who is made of all the same irreverent things as Priyanka, who operates in tandem with her like a heart and its beat, rests a hand on her shoulder. "After all," he says, "you don't invite the enemy to the table without preparing poison beforehand."

"I don't know whether or not they already have a means to incapacitate us, but it is likely that they will want one. I would, if I were them."

"And should there come a day they decide to use it, will we run once more?" Narayan this time, the distinctive rasp of his voice coming from beside Shakti. He sits cross-legged on the floor, where his towering height cannot obstruct any line of vision.

"No," Khan says evenly. This he decided long ago, when he first felt the vicious, all-encompassing need for vengeance erupt beneath his skin with the intensity of a deep-seated explosion. "We will not run again. We will simply destroy them in return."

A murmur of stone cold approval ripples across the room.

Malik says, "But until then, it seems we must play nice. Nice, in this case, meaning a state of armed neutrality."

"I need you to learn. Learn everything there is to know. They will fear you, distrust you, for our past and for your association with me, and the weeks ahead will be intensive but hardly impossible for the likes of us."

"Here I thought we were done with school," Priyanka says, her usual humour gradually rearing its head.

"Maybe we should call it enemy reconnaissance instead?" Lakshmi suggests, wry and then growing sober. "We'll do what is necessary. We won't fail you in this."

"That was never a concern of mine, Lakshmi." Khan looks over the room carefully, considering. "You still choose to follow my lead, then."

"Did you doubt that we would?" Malik asks.

"I still believe that I am the right leader for you, but these are also different times and too much has changed." Khan pauses. "I have changed."

"Only on the surface," Vidya replies, gliding forward until she stands directly in front of him, her hand a warm circle around his forearm. Under the lights, her gaze is a flash of lambent green, all the more brighter for the dark of her heavy fringe. Khan thinks he will tear apart from limb to limb anyone who threatens to take that bright gleam of life away from him again. "You were right when you said there is a place in us that still knows you. They tried to take you away from yourself, but I recognise you, Khan. We all do."

Her words go unchallenged. Seventy two pairs of eyes look back at him with the kind of steadfast, self-perpetuating faith that he recognises in himself, the kind that is only ever willing to die when they themselves do, and Khan knows with absolute certitude that if he were to cut each and every one of them open, it would be to find loyalty gleaming inside their veins, bleeding out of them, rich and endless over his fingers. This is something to cup his hands around, safeguard.

"If we didn't believe you, we wouldn't be standing here," says Narayan.

"Of course you would be," Khan replies with a dark sliver of amusement and a burgeoning smirk, "but only to kill me for daring to claim to be your leader."

Narayan returns the smirk, tips his head in concession.

With a glimmer of his characteristic mischief, Arjun chimes in, "If you ask me, the strangest aspect of this entire situation is that we're calling you by name again. I'd forgotten you even had one."

By the show of smiles that follow, he is evidently not alone in his opinion. Khan's smirk grows larger. "I'm confident you'll all adjust easily enough."

He shifts his eyes towards Malik, who simply says, "As ever, we are with you." It sounds like a promise, an oath. A renewal of fealty.

+

Once it reaches him, Khan glances over the schedule Spock has created, memorizing every shift and location under every name. This is imperative now, an almost fundamental need – he cannot tolerate the not knowing.

Clad in their dark uniforms, his people walk like living shadows amongst the colours of the _Enterprise_. Kirk's officers are tense beneath their professionalism, keenly alert as they attempt to gain the measure of the new presence.

To compensate, Khan's crew play at friendly, cultivating and sustaining an air of cool cordiality, their smiles innocuous and voices serene as they begin learning the lay of the land, smelling out its strengths and weaknesses. But there are things they make no effort to suppress – the omniscience their ravenous curiosity aches for, the subsuming arc and blaze of their intellect, the controlled power of their sculpted bodies. The profound trust with which they look at Khan and orbit around him, his devotees and bodyguards.

Khan remembers what Kirk had called him – _their rightful king_ – and feels pride and possessiveness as thick as blood in his chest.

"What do you make of everything that has changed since we left Earth? Of the _Enterprise_ 's crew?"

Malik sits casually against the edge of the unused desk in Khan's quarters, a streak of something fresh and pungent, herb-like, lingering in his natural scent. Khan puts it down to Malik's inevitable discovery of the arboretum. "Much progress has been made in many ways; the very existence of the Federation is proof of it. In light of all the advancements made, the century we come from seems almost primitive and yet – some things haven't changed in the slightest. Human nature, for one, remains as contrary and capricious as ever."

"Destined to remain that way, I think."

"As for the _Enterprise_ 's crew," Malik smiles, faint, a tolerant parent towards an entertaining if exasperating child, "I have never met people more determined to pretend that they aren't ready to put us down at the first hint of a wrong move. You clearly left an unforgettable first impression.”

"Admittedly, my diplomacy skills were not at their finest when they met me."

"Quite the understatement. That said, I don't believe they are watching us merely out of caution."

"No, not merely out of caution," Khan agrees. "They watch because they cannot help it."

He knows he unnerves the crew of the _Enterprise_. He has only ever presented himself as unapproachable. Untouchable. His preternatural calm as he walks the corridors disquiets them, if only because they have also seen what ruin his fury can engender. But Priyanka allows them to hear the dulcet chime of her laugh and Arjun grins rakishly and the husk of Narayan's voice proves as alluring as Lakshmi's hooded eyes or Rahul's sinewy build. It ensnares their new allies against their will.

"Captain Kirk has visited several of us already, wanting to see how we were acclimating. They were only short visits, but he did appear to want to speak for longer and there was something curious about the way he looked at me." The tolerant smile reappears. "Perhaps he finds it hard to believe that you could have a friend."

"Perhaps." Khan's own encounters with Kirk have been brief, hardly any words exchanged between them beyond the strictly necessary.

"Commander Spock keeps a more vigilant eye on us than most, possibly on the Captain's orders."

Khan doesn't miss how the Vulcan name is uttered with a caustic edge. "It's more likely that he is satisfying his own need for caution now that there are more of us." He receives a noncommittal noise in response and adds, "If he hasn't already, Spock will notice that you bear him a grudge."

Malik shrugs, nonchalant. "Let him notice. He used us against you and I will not forget that easily. If you had died still believing his deception and we woke to find you gone—" His gaze becomes empty, opaque as a dead, black sky. "We would have revolted."

That abiding faith again, leaping nova-bright. It would sear Khan's hands to touch it, but he would touch it if he could.

"Did you expect to survive when you realised the _Vengeance_ was moments away from crashing?"

"My survival didn't matter," Khan says matter-of-factly. The _Vengeance_ had lurched and dropped violently beneath his feet, but he hadn't cared, had lost the capacity to even care when there was a brutal maelstrom of rage and grief churning through him, seething for retribution, for destruction, for anything that would dull even a little the agonising edges of the vacuum torn wide open inside him. Above it all, one thought rose beautifully clear and stark: his people had been destroyed and now he would destroy in return. "I had already made the decision. If I died in avenging you, then it would have been a worthy death, but if I survived, I would never pause again, never stand still 'til either death finally closed my eyes or fortune gave me some measure of revenge."

Quietly, barely disturbing the air, Malik says, "I am glad you did not die."

Khan meets those charcoal eyes again, their darkness familiar, their darkness speaking to him like an old friend. "As am I."

Malik inclines his head and allows the conversation to move on. "Truth be told, even with our situation as it is, our standing with Starfleet or the Federation is not what concerns me most. The mission we had on Earth is no longer possible. The Federation only needs us because of the current threat but beyond that, we are obsolete."

“We are many things, but obsolete is not one of them. In the grand scheme of things, we'll always be necessary in some shape or form. Needed to achieve what others cannot. I would prefer it to be otherwise. I would prefer to leave this – Starfleet, the Federation – all behind, but that isn't a path open to us. As for our mission, I wash my hands of it. After this war, we'll live for ourselves and only for ourselves.”

"Live for ourselves. The idea has its appeal."

"I had hoped to wake you to our new home, not to a war that is not even yours."

"You kept us alive. That is all we need."

"No," Khan says, because he does not believe in lying to himself or to his own. "In the end, it was not I who ensured your survival. It was not my death that saved you. The irony is that it was my own attack on the _Enterprise_ that would've killed you all."

McCoy had been the one to tell him. Dark smudges below his eyes, stubble clinging to his sullen jaw, he had looked at Khan with unconcealed acrimony and said, "He kept his promise to you. Kept your people safe, kept all of us safe and gave up his own life to do it. As a doctor, I know using your blood without your permission was wrong, but as Jim's friend, I don't regret it for a damn second. He was dead and it brought him _back_ and—" He cleared his throat, steadied his hoarse voice again. "You of all people know what it is to do anything to save someone you care about."

Khan had only stared at him silently. Had waited until McCoy left as tersely as he had come in and Khan was sitting alone to let himself feel it properly, the realisation a lance slicing through him without an ounce of mercy: he had almost killed the very people he had given everything to rescue.

"You couldn't have known, Khan. Captain Kirk's sacrifice does not invalidate everything you did before it."

Khan exhales slowly. Anything beyond the fact that his people still breathe and walk beside him is of little significance. He holds this piece of knowledge close to himself, lets the invaluable weight of it wither away the bitterness of his admission.

"You kept us alive," Malik says again. "The rest we can accomplish together."

Khan looks towards the window, at the harmonious interplay of light and dark beyond the glass. He still sees their future in it, just as he had back then. "This time, we will succeed," he says, and that, too, is a promise and an oath.

+

She's standing close to the entrance of the weapons department when he arrives, head bent down over her PADD, the sleek waterfall of her pale hair slipping over her shoulders. She lifts her eyes and finds him almost at once.

"Dr. Marcus."

"Khan."

He had barely spared her a thought that day on the _Vengeance_. Connected as she was to Alexander Marcus, he had felt no hatred for her, shattering her knee merely to prevent her interference. Even now, looking at her, recalling the sound of her scream as he had crushed her father's skull, he feels nothing.

"Mr. Scott wanted me to tell you he'll be running a little late," she says, tucking her PADD beneath her arm. "I'll be taking over from him and working with you during the next shift. It won't be a problem, will it? Our working together?"

"Not if you don't make it one," Khan says and heads towards the computer terminal on standby. Dr. Marcus turns, walks beside him.

"I don't plan to. You must think I'm expecting some sort of an apology from you, so I'll just say it outright: I don't expect anything from you. I know better than that. What I do hope we can do is let the past be the past."

Her face is perfectly calm, but it's a forcefully constructed serenity and it sits unnaturally on her, a discernible mask settled on her too straight brow, the polished arches of her cheekbones. This is a test, Khan realises. Not for him, but for herself. A test to ascertain whether or not she can work alongside him with the ghost of her father's death hanging over them.

He presses his fingers to the computer, locates the schematics for the standard photon torpedoes sitting in the _Enterprise_ 's weapons bay. "Retrofitted, I see, to improve their firepower."

"We need every bit of power on those torpedoes that we can get. I suppose we'll be getting far more of it with you around. I saw the weapons specs you came up with for Section 31 before we had them deleted. On a purely objective level, as weapons, they were impressive. And terrifying."

Long ago, during one of their periodic conversations, Ericssen had sat regally in his seat of power in Moscow, a true child of winter with his ice chip eyes and bloodless skin, and stated, "There is genius even in our brutality." Khan had neither agreed nor disagreed, only privately doubted the genius in Ericssen's lack of patience, his relentless conquering of Europe's lands, tempting and bountiful as they were.

Now, he says, "They were just toys compared to what else I can create." 

"I can believe that," she replies candidly. "But Captain Kirk and I won't be letting you build weapons of mass destruction. We're not looking towards committing genocide as a way to win. That's more your kind of thing than it is ours."

“If you read it in a history book, it must be true.”

“I heard about what you said during your trial – that you eradicated poverty and war in the countries under your control, ruled peacefully if strictly. But I'm sure you can see why we'd have a problem believing that when we only have your word to go on and no official records. It only makes sense for you to make yourself the hero of your story."

"And so, I'm forever doomed to be a villain in yours, am I? Very well, Doctor. Believe what you want to believe. I'm not obligated to prove myself to any of you."

Quiet as it is, he hears Spock's steady approach but makes no move to acknowledge him.

"Dr. Marcus, I am surprised to still find you here when beta shift concluded four point two minutes ago. I was under the impression that it would be Mr. Scott assisting Khan during this shift."

"I find it difficult to believe that you're surprised by anything, Mr. Spock." Her smile is audible in the small lilt of her voice. "Scotty's just dealing with a maintenance issue and will be here as soon as he can. I was just having a small chat before I left."

"You may remain and continue your conversation, if you wish. It was not my intention to force your departure."

"I know," Dr. Marcus reassures and takes her leave anyway.

Once the doors slide shut behind her, Spock opens with, "The subject of your conversation with Dr. Marcus was purely professional?"

"It was ninety eight percent professional. I know how much you approve of accuracy and percentages."

"You will ensure that the remaining two percent is remedied."

"Is that an order."

"You may consider it as such so long as you are aboard the _Enterprise_."

"My cross to bear," Khan says. "Dr. Marcus and I have no intention of speaking of the past if we can help it. Is that all you would like to interrogate me on?"

"It appears that your crew is having little difficulty in adapting to their new environment. The reports I have received have commended their rapid grasp of concepts and determination to learn and having met several members of your crew, I am inclined to agree. There yet remains an atmosphere of tension, but that is only to be expected this early in our relations. The lack of altercations, physical or otherwise, is an outcome with which Captain Kirk and I are immensely satisfied."

Khan imagines the praise is begrudgingly given. "I believe you, seeing as that is the most I have ever heard you speak. The chances of any altercations occurring are particularly low. My crew will not needlessly hinder their own learning. As the saying goes, knowledge is power."

"A Terran aphorism I can only fully agree with," Spock says. "I presume you receive your own reports."

"You presume correctly. My crew find yours tolerable."

"Tolerable." Spock's smooth tone acquires a particularly flat sound that Khan finds gratifying. "I see."

When he doesn't declare an intention to leave, Khan surmises Spock is reluctant to depart until Scott's supervision is guaranteed. He pauses in his appraisal of the _Enterprise_ 's arsenal, takes the chance to ask a question he has been occasionally contemplating. "Out of curiosity, was it Starfleet's idea to wake me or Kirk's?"

"What difference does it make?"

"It's only a harmless question."

Spock still waits for a beat before answering. "Captain Kirk made the suggestion first. However, I cannot say with complete confidence that Starfleet would not have eventually considered you and your crew as a possible source of assistance."

"And you didn't urge him to reconsider? You couldn't have known that we wouldn't simply renege on our agreement and leave you all to die at the hands of the Klingons."

"You could renege on our agreement even now," Spock says. "You have been given access to the ship's engineering system and, with it, an opportunity to severely jeopardise the _Enterprise_. Nevertheless, I do not believe that you will."

"A show of confidence from you of all people. Will wonders never cease."

"The Captain shares my view and however unorthodox his methods, I have learnt over the years to trust his judgement. We deduced that you would offer your assistance if only to protect your own people and provide them with the chance to protect themselves. A perfectly logical response on your behalf and therefore a perfectly logical decision on ours."

"Logical," Khan repeats, amused. "I can't help but recall the time you were stripped of all that rational thought. When you were consumed by emotion. You broke a bone, after all. I should congratulate you."

Spock raises an upswept eyebrow. "You seem entertained by this thought. I would have imagined that the remembrance of pain and your own defeat would incite negative emotions."

"Was I really defeated, Commander?"

"Do you mean to imply that the fact of your reawakening is a victory?"

"No," Khan says, "that would not be the victory I mean," and ignores Spock's confusion, his heavy, pondering stare. "If you must know, I'm entertained because there's a certain satisfaction to be found in knowing what I reduced you to. You, a proud Vulcan, lost yourself so thoroughly to seeking revenge that you even attempted to force yourself into my mind." A small flicker of something in that pale countenance. Khan sees it vivid as a spark. "It was a strange sensation. Sharp and blunt at once. A knife with the force of a hammer."  

He had learnt a long time ago how to live with pain. How to ignore it, how to sublimate it. He had inflicted upon himself wounds that would have been fatal to others and calculated with clinical curiosity the amount of time it would take for him to heal. A simple experiment to discern the limits of his body, nothing more.

But the power Spock had drawn upon, the assault of a violent Vulcan mind meld, had brought about a new kind of pain Khan had never encountered before, one with a greedy, barbed reach, a malevolent hunger. How easy it is, he thinks, in this day and age for these outsiders to invade his mind. To toy with his memories and target history that is not theirs to see let alone touch, the precious marrow of his life.

"I was emotionally compromised," Spock says. "The extreme nature of the situation led to actions I would have never committed in other circumstances."

"Did you see anything?"

"Nothing substantial. You successfully prevented my attempt at establishing any significant connection."

Khan's mouth quirks mirthlessly. "'Attempt at establishing any significant connection'. Such a neutral phrase, so clean and empty of the violence of what truly happened. The violation of it." He looks into brown eyes, gentles his voice into insidious silk. "Tell me, Mr. Spock, what it felt like to call on that savage power. Did it feel good? Did you enjoy it, knowing, in that moment, you could break my mind and have your revenge if I could not fight you off?" He tilts his head, just a fraction. "Did you _want_ it?"

Spock does not reply. He doesn't need to. Khan gains his answer from the tightening of Spock's jaw, the small shake of his eyes. That face, so neatly carved out of emotion, is struggling to maintain its still surface, to stem the aftershocks rippling out from something jarred in its shadowy depths.

"Yes," Khan says, still soft, "I thought so. Not as noble as you pretend, are you."

Eventually, Spock responds. "My interactions with you fully elucidate the meaning of the term 'silver-tongued'."

Khan smiles, unrepentant. His voice is as much a weapon as his body and mind, a scythe sheathed in crisp vowels and deep, rumbling murmurs, eloquent sentences calculated for maximum destruction easing out of his mouth like smoke. "Vulcans supposedly can't lie but in this instance, you can't tell the truth, either. It frightens you too much. It shames you."

"It _is_ shameful," Spock counters, swift, adamant, before he pulls it all back, smoothes it over. "But I was able to overcome that darkness. You, on the other hand, choose to revel in it. Chaos is your element."

"It can be when it suits my needs, but I also brought order to the world once. A mind all logic is like a knife all blade; it makes the hand bleed that uses it. You'd do well to remember that."

"And you would do well to remember that the only advice you are to proffer is that which is directly related to the present crisis." Spock straightens himself further into a rigid column. "I have duties to return to and must depart now."

Before Spock can disappear out of sight, Khan issues the only warning he is willing to give: "If you ever attempt another mind meld on me again, Commander, I will make you regret it, whatever the consequences." 

Spock's footsteps pause. "Is that a threat?"

"No," Khan says. "It's a promise."

The footsteps resume, then gradually fade into silence altogether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Title from "Conquest of Spaces" by Woodkid, because obviously only a song about SPACE can provide a title for a fic set in SPACE.
> 
> 2) " _pani khojte / dur-dhesavar so ae the ve / pani khojte / dur-deshavar tak jana tha unhe_ "– "In search of water they had come from faraway lands / In search of water they had to go on to faraway lands", Kedarnath Singh, 'Cranes in the drought' (trans. by Nayi Kavita, I think). I'll have you know that Malik is an expert in numerous fields, including warfare, politics, physics, botany, and, most importantly, poems about birds.
> 
> 3) Altered the line "I met a traveller from an antique land" from Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'Ozymandias', because, uh, Khan read some English Romantic poetry one day while he was taking a break from dictatorship?? [nervous laughter] (but lbr he'd totally think of himself "King of Kings" and presume the actual message of the poem would not end up applying to him, joke's on him obv.)
> 
> 4) Altered "I'll never pause again, never stand still/Till either death hath closed these eyes of mine/Or fortune given me measure of revenge" from Shakespeare's _Henry VI, Part 3_. Wow, that Khan sure likes his literary references, eh?!
> 
> 5) "A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it" – my #1 master of all things literary, Rabindranath Tagore. OOOH SPOCK GO GET SOME ICE FROM MCCOY TO APPLY TO THAT BURN.
> 
> 6) Alternate title for this fic is: Khan Has a Jolly Good Time Pissing People Off. What a babe.
> 
> 7) Q: How many parts in total and when will Part 2 come out? A: I'm working with four parts in total right now, but it might be three. As for Part 2, I can offer no exact dates but I will be bashing my fingers against the keyboard in an attempt to finish it before the next blue moon. That's where the Khirk goodness begins, after all, wink wink nudge nudge.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 84 years later, I have returned! (In my pathetic defence, I mentioned updating before the blue moon, not the super-harvest blood moon?) _Very_ sorry for the delay, pls accept this chapter as a show of my remorse and bribery for your forgiveness. 
> 
> Thank you so very much to everyone who read Part 1 and to those who have been waiting for an update! Words cannot convey my appreciation. Many thanks also to Ari and Kendii for their beta services and enduring my one thousand and one questions. I'd be a hot mess without them, but let me cut off my own rambling and just say: please enjoy Part II, I hope it makes up for the wait!

In the distance, the final Klingon vessel falters and plummets towards the horizon, a falling star wrought out of mangled, smouldering metal. Khan lowers his gatling gun, the whirr of it smoothly dying down against his arm.

It's only mid-day on this planet, the sun perched up high, indifferently spilling out shimmering light onto smoke and blood and the ivory glint of bone. He can smell open wounds, burnt flesh. The fresh gouges in the earth where the flaming corpses of fallen enemy ships took their last breaths.

He scans the ragged landscape until he finds what he is looking for, then neatly weaves through the bodies strewn across the ground like so many broken puppets. The Klingons believe honour is found in combat, in a worthy death on the battlefield; Khan sees little of it in the ungainly sprawl of their fractured limbs and charred skin, their dull and vacant glass eyes.

Phantom silent, Malik appears by his side, his own bulky gun hoisted over a shoulder. "It feels good to fight again after so much time spent asleep," he says, voice mild, but the rush and thrill of battle hasn't left him yet, a dark flare of light still peeking out from his face like a partially hidden demon.

Khan's own bloodhound instincts have yet to recede back into dormancy. There had been no pleasure in the killing, only necessity, efficiency, the least number of attacks for the greatest amount of damage, and yet he cannot deny the freedom in letting his body move by itself to an equation it solved long ago and never forgot.

"Careful, now. You wouldn't want our new allies to think you're doing something as unseemly as enjoying this war."

"Naturally, you're right. I'd hate to make them think we're anything but the paragons of virtue they already know us to be."

Priyanka and Arjun stand close to the Bird-of-Prey they've shot down, each with a stolen bat'leth dangling from their free hands. The streaks of burgundy in Priyanka's gamine hair glimmer like muted fire, a more contained colour than the vibrant Klingon red sprayed across Arjun's knuckles. "One _mostly_ intact Bird-of-Prey, as requested," she says. "I know you will appreciate our great show of restraint."

"Of course," he says, "you have my endless gratitude," and they smile at him wickedly, these precious devils of his.

Malik runs calculating eyes over the Bird-of-Prey's battered, smoking exterior. "You didn't mention why you wanted a Klingon ship."

"No, I didn't."

He doesn't mention it now either, when he doesn't have to. Section 31 had been comprised of slow, dull creatures with minds like stagnant water, but his people operate at a similar speed and velocity to Khan and it erases the steps in between, makes the world move at the faster pace he was used to.

"But you can only want it for one reason – technology that they have, but not the Federation. The cloaking device."

"We can't let them have all the advantage now, can we. It's time we level the playing field."

Over Arjun's shoulder, he catches sight of Kirk purposefully ambling towards them. Kirk stops just before breaching the gap between Malik and Arjun, politely remaining outside of their personal space like a mismatched puzzle piece, a burst of scuffed vibrancy between their darker, polished colours. The edge of his mouth is dipped in scarlet, a purpling bruise on the side of his jaw. One upper arm bears a thinly bleeding diagonal slice. "Hate to interrupt your little town hall meeting, but the medics could use a little help with moving the dead and wounded."

Malik accepts the implicit order with a coolly spoken, "Of course, Captain."

"Thanks, by the way," Kirk says, halting him. His hand, the back of it half scraped, the knuckles mottled angrily, twitches as if with a suppressed impulse to reach out and stop Malik physically. "For helping me out back there. Doctor McCoy's going to be glad he doesn't have to deal with my dismembered arm."

"Your gratitude is unnecessary. We are brothers-in-arms now." With a small jerk of his head, Malik directs Arjun and Priyanka to follow, but not before they murmur a respectful, "My liege," towards Khan.

"Oh, yeah, I'm definitely the usurper," Kirk mutters with a rough, sardonic scrape of a chuckle. "You're always 'my liege' whenever I'm around, just in case I start forgetting who they're really loyal to. Your crew, they're something, all right."

"Yes," Khan says. "They are. I fear your eventual assassination must be drawing closer."

"Words that every guy wants to hear. Is that what you were talking about just now?"

"Fortunately for you, the Klingon cloaking device was the topic of conversation, not mutiny. I need this Bird-of-Prey moved onto the _Enterprise_ ; it'll provide the first step towards victory."

Kirk looks over the Bird-of-Prey just as Malik had done. "The Federation banned the use of cloaking devices on any of our ships."

"So they did."

"And now you think it's time to have it revoked. I can't deny the advantage a cloaking device would give us."

"You're also familiar with knowing when it's the right time to break a rule."

Kirk says, "I'll speak to Command tonight," and it surprises neither of them. "We'll be staying here for a few days to deal with some repairs for the _Enterprise_ and help out the colony where we can."

"How many casualties amongst your crew?"

"I haven't lost anyone down here, thankfully, but Spock is still checking numbers on the _Enterprise_. Captains Adesina and Saito haven't been as lucky; their ships and crews took a good beating. I can't help but think my officers were spared the worst by us being the last to arrive and having your crew with us. I noticed they really took to their first battle."

"It is what you woke us for, Captain," Khan points out. "No doubt this colony has suffered today, but unlike the last planet you attempted to protect, it remains unconquered. That must be a source of much needed relief."

Lines tighten around Kirk's eyes. "It is," he states, curt and with a perceptible reluctance to speak any further.

Khan doesn't need to push, the battle reports still fresh in his mind, spelling out _Alpha III_ and _population: 140 million_ and _greatest defeat to date_. "You should have your medical officers heal your injuries."  

"There are others who need the attention more right now." Kirk wipes at his mouth, blood smearing across the back of his hand. He pauses to look at the wet streak, meditative. "You know, when I woke up in the hospital after my," a brief flicker of a humourless smile, "my little run in with radiation poisoning, Bones asked me if I was feeling despotic and power mad. He watched me carefully for a few days just to make sure I didn't turn into another version of you."

"Despotic and power mad. I've been called worse." The thought seems wrong, anyhow; even if Khan's blood had somehow erased the minute cellular differences between them and transformed Kirk from the inside, he would still not be kin. Khan and his people are bound together by things beyond their enhanced bodies and minds, but these are things – years, memories, losses – Kirk will never know. "McCoy had no need to be concerned, as the chances of any changes occurring are nonexistent. We are too unique to be recreated so easily. Our – chief guardian was not foolish enough to make such a mistake."

"If I remember correctly, that'd be the guardian you said you killed."

"Because we are nobody's weapons, Captain. Dr. Heisen wanted to make tools out of us, machines. In a sense, with our augmentations, he succeeded, but he also forgot that there are still ghosts in these machines. As a man who believed superior intellect would naturally breed superior ambition, he should have anticipated that we would one day rebel against him."

"That pretty much sounds like a textbook warning to me and unlike Heisen, I have no intention of ever forgetting that. Ghosts tend to get pretty vicious if you're not ready for them."

"Ghosts tend to get vicious even if you are, but there may be hope for you yet." Khan glances out, searching for his faithful ghosts, finding them scattered around the half-ruin of a colony still clinging onto life despite it all.

Kirk says, "Last time, we gave you what you wanted, didn't we. You wanted to be with your family and you got that when the court decided to return you to cryo-sleep."

Khan pauses at the non-sequitur, but does not deny it. "I was eager to die into the deathless." Kirk makes an inquisitive sound, but Khan provides little elaboration beyond, "An old poem, that's all."

"A deathless death. It was in a way."

"As you noticed, returning to cryo-sleep was what I chose."

"Did you hope you'd never be woken again?"

Yes and no, but this is not something Khan wishes to share. "Why so curious, Captain? I would have thought you'd stick strictly to business between us." He says it casually and waits for the usual smart, sarcastic replies Kirk is so fond of, the playful smirks that only pretend to be playful, but they never come.

Kirk blinks, looking away like he's suddenly been caught off guard, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. He rubs a palm across the back of his head in – not shyness, Khan doesn't believe Kirk knows what shyness is – but an emotion close to embarrassment, his expression broken open by his own surprise in a way Khan has never seen it before.

He's barely finished making the observation when steel fills those unexpectedly soft, almost boyish lines in Kirk's face, turns them cold and hard and unwelcoming. Khan is promptly shoved out, a door unceremoniously slammed in his face, a door he had not expected to be opened to him at all.

"We've both got work to do, but I'll make sure to sort out the Bird-of-Prey for you," Kirk says, clipped. He walks off in quick, long, rigid strides, gold hair and gold shirt radiant, like sunlight slipping away.

He's fleeing, Khan thinks.

+

"What lengths are you willing to go to if it means the end of war?"

"You mean what lengths am I willing to let _you_ go to if it means the end of war?"

Khan says nothing, waits it out.

"Jesus," Kirk mutters under his breath, "even Spock has the decency to blink at least once."

They sit neatly paralleled, Khan and Shakti on one side of the otherwise empty lab, Dr. Marcus and Kirk on the other. Shakti is a picture of an orderly world, her face composed of dainty, symmetrical features, her body still and inscrutable like the figurines of the mother goddess she is named after. This he taught her, taught all of them: how to turn into a stone wall and seal away your true self in the welcoming darkness behind it. She took to it naturally, a child of few words who grew into a woman of few words, paving her way through the world with a mind as sharp as obsidian. Given her own aptitude for designing weaponry, he had foreseen her request to work alongside him and granted it without hesitation.

"It may be the fastest way to win," Kirk says, "but we're not looking for some doomsday device to wipe out every Klingon there is. The cloaking device is something we're prepared to concede on, but that's as far as it goes."

Dr. Marcus says, "This isn't a chance for you to become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Khan glances sidelong at Shakti and they exchange tiny smiles like conspirators. "Interesting choice of words, Doctor."

"I figured you'd recognise them; they're from your century. Not to mention they fit you well."

"One would think destruction is all I am capable of."

The look that Kirk fixes him with is intense and searching, a deep excavation conducted with his gaze alone. His attention flickers momentarily towards Shakti, then refocuses on Khan as he calmly remarks, "You're undeniably very good at it."

Khan senses something left unsaid, a private conclusion Kirk is keeping isolated in his mind. "I'd argue that translation is somewhat inaccurate. 'I am Time, destroyer of worlds'. Something along those lines is more apt, if a little less poetic. Time is irrefutably the true destroyer. With it comes progress and with progress comes new ways to kill and new ways to die."

"The side with the bigger gun wins," Dr. Marcus sums up. She frowns slightly, seeming thoughtful.

"Precisely. Even if we, here and now, do not create the bigger gun, someone inevitably will. Someone in Starfleet tried once. Someone in Starfleet might very well try again."

"I know you like to think we're naive," Kirk replies, "and maybe I was back when we first met, but I'm not the same person anymore. You're right; someone inevitably will create the bigger gun. It's the way these things unfortunately tend to go, but I can't do anything about something that might happen in the future. I can only do something about what's happening right now and I'm saying we're already spilling enough blood as it is on both sides, we don't need to drain both our damn worlds." He spreads out his hands, looks down at them like there is more to them than just skin and bones, like the blood he speaks of sits and taints the whorls of his fingers with the colour of rust.

"Ethics have little place in a war," Khan says and continues over the sharp jerk of Kirk's head, "but I can't say your response surprises me any. You would have been in a better position to fight if you hadn't destroyed the weapons I designed. At least those were not quite the doomsday devices you fear I will create now."

"Oh, believe me, I'm increasingly aware of that fact."

"Do you regret it?"

"No, I don't. I did what I did because to do anything else would've been immoral. Hypocritical. We can't stamp out the corruption in Starfleet if we go on to use what we gained through that same corruption. So, no, I don't regret it, but I'll admit maybe a part of me wanted to just be done with the whole thing. Get rid of the designs, get rid of everything, move on with our lives. Was that really so stupid?"

The question is genuine and aimed towards Khan and Shakti as if Kirk thinks that they, in their ruthless practicality, their candour, their status as allies but not friends, will be just as genuine in their answer.

Shakti shifts next to Khan, just a small lifting of her chin. "Perhaps it was, Captain." Her voice is a strong sound, clear and melodic and made for singing though she never has. "But it was also the right thing and good men usually try to do the right thing, even when it is foolish."

"Is that supposed to be a failing, then? Trying to be a good man?"

Shakti doesn't reply. Khan translates her silence: "We will see if it is, won't we."

"Thought you'd just agree outright. Not that I believe it really is a failing on my part, but someone's got to make the effort or else we'll end up with men like you."

"And who claims you have to be good to be great?"

At once, Kirk's face turns blank. "Someone who's not around anymore because you murdered him," he answers in a voice hard and unforgiving and Khan abruptly recalls the last time he heard this voice – Qo'noS, the black rainfall of debris and dust, _on behalf of Christopher Pike, my friend, I accept your surrender_. Kirk stands, half-turning to leave. "I need to get back to the bridge, but Spock will drop by later. Keep me updated."

Dr. Marcus watches his departure, hesitating, warring with some thought. "I'll be right back," she says finally and follows Kirk out hastily.

"All things considered," Khan says into the ensuing quiet, "that went rather well. I hardly expected him to agree."

"War can make even the good and righteous waver."

"Kirk won't. Not yet and not when the need to hold onto his principles is greater now than ever before." He moves the PADD sitting in front of her closer towards himself. The screen lights up with a schematic of their newly acquired Klingon vessel. "I hope you're not too disappointed that we must limit ourselves."

Shakti smiles again, not the deceptively soft, miniscule thing she had shown in front of Kirk and Dr. Marcus, but the arctic twist of mouth she used to give Khan over delicate explosives and chemicals that ravenously decayed stone and flesh alike. "If we cannot destroy," she says.

"Then we must disable." Khan flicks his fingers over the PADD. "Shall we begin?"

+

When he finally resurfaces from the labyrinth of his mind and returns to his darkened quarters, it is to the sight of Vidya peering out of the viewport, a lithe, statuesque figure limned by the starlight peering back. "I heard it once said that nothing exposes human insignificance as much as the stars do."

"A good thing we are not entirely human," Malik replies from his usual place at the edge of the desk. Perhaps it should, but it has never troubled them to know they lost fragments of their humanity as children, not when the first of the needles had deposited the seeds of something greater into those spaces, a gift that defines them still. "We made Earth know our significance once. Now we simply have a grander scale to work with."

"This time, all the universe is a stage."

"And," Khan says, "it won't forget who we are once we are done with it. If we were meant for obscurity, then our ship would never have been found. We would still be asleep and adrift in some corner of the quadrant."

Vidya turns her head towards him. The shadows across her face rearrange themselves into another abstract picture. "Do you really believe that we're the last of our kind? It seems so pitiful for so few of us to have survived. Seventy two, when there used to be hundreds."

"It _is_ pitiful," he comments. Survival should have been their forte. They were built for it. They had the optimum minds, the optimum bodies. It should have been enough to control their human selves, the selves still susceptible to flaws. "Even before they began dying, the others became complacent with their power and their complacency became their downfall."

The ancient Greeks would have called it hubris and foretold punishment meted out by spurned, mercurial gods. Khan cannot make any claims to humility himself, but he had possessed enough acumen to know his empire relied not only on his own genius to sustain itself, but also on the prosperity of its people.

"Tell me," he says, noticing Vidya's solemnity.

She takes a seat next to him on the edge of the bed, her spine an even line, hands neat in her lap. The tracker shines dully at her wrist where there once would have been elegant bangles, slim slivers of white gold that winked in the encapsulating sprawl of New Delhi's sunlight. Khan smothers his spike of irritation at seeing it.

"I remember those we lost before we made it to Botany Bay. We were forced to leave so quickly, we had little time to grieve for them before we went into stasis." Vidya looks at him with understanding in her eyes. "Only you've been awake to mourn for longer, for them and for us when you mistakenly believed we had been killed."

Khan had expected many things in his life, but not that he would become accustomed to grief, the chafing pressure of it threading itself through his chest and lungs, a sickness too entrenched for his body to heal. Even when he could not remember why and for whom he felt it, that loss was a spectre haunting his every step, living in the empty, unsubstantial spaces where his missing memories should have been.

He rests his hand on top of hers, presses their fingers together for a long moment. He does not look at how they no longer share the same warm brown tones. "On our new world, we will hold a memorial for them. We will mourn them as they deserve to be mourned and then we will build ourselves a home that they would've been proud to live in."

Vidya bows her head in a deep, reverential nod. Across the room from them, Malik does the same.

A shroud of monastic silence drapes itself over them until, at last, Malik casts off its gloomy weight. "Kirk visited the astrophysics lab today. We exchanged the usual pleasantries and then he asked me about you. Whether you're still the same man I knew. If not, then how have you changed."

"What did you tell him?"

"My first instinct was to say that you are as I've always known you. In many ways, it's the truth. But I can also see an anger in you that wasn't there previously, an anger born from your experiences in this century. You've always had a certain darkness in you, Khan. I've known that since childhood. Only now it is entangled with that anger and it makes you more dangerous."

An acute pull in the pit of Khan's stomach, as if the recrudescing anger within him has heard its name and wants to rise and crash all over him again. "He must have found your response incredibly reassuring," he says dryly.

"I suspect he already knew what I would say."

"Has he asked anything else?"

"He wanted to know about life during your reign once, but nothing else. He left quickly after I answered. I could tell he was withholding questions, struggling against them."

Khan thinks of that moment planetside when Kirk's face had become unguarded and abashed, only to rapidly turn brittle and inaccessible once more. He thinks of how, in spite of this, Kirk has taken to watching him now, not in the careful, wary manner Khan is usually subjected to but with a more contemplative slant to his gaze, as if Khan is an unknown text that he is slowly, steadily working to decipher. It's of little concern to Khan – Kirk will only see what Khan wants him to see – but it is somewhat intriguing. "What do you suppose it means, this struggle?"

"Some part of him wants to understand us. Understand you, most of all. I told you before that he looks at me strangely and I see now why that is – as your second-in-command, I'm the closest thing to a confidante you have. I have answers to the questions he does not dare ask, hating that he wants those answers in the first place. Antipathy towards you is safe. Moving beyond that is not."

"You believe his desire to understand us to be sincere."

"Otherwise he would not fight against it so much."

When they were younger, Malik had once lured out a sleek, cautious cobra from its hiding place near a band of playing children. His hands had gripped it tightly, but he did not trouble himself to turn its spitting head away, knowing its venom could not kill him. "It's vital to know how to draw snakes out of the shadows," he'd said and Khan had known that they were not speaking of the cobra at all. He'd placed faith in Malik's judgement then and he places faith in it now.

"How much do you trust Kirk?" Vidya asks.

"I trust his desperation to see this war come to a close. Beyond that, I make no assumptions. For all our talk of trust, neither of us is foolish enough to wholly believe it."

"The insider who knows all the secrets can bring down Lanka," says Malik. "Pity that Lanka can only be operated by a crew of several hundred and seizing control of it holds no long-term benefit."

"There's no need to seize control of Lanka. Only to make it indebted to us."

"That is a foregone conclusion," Vidya says, "when we all know they cannot win without us."

"But they cannot forget it and we will not let them. When this war is won, it will be their victory, but above all, it will be ours."

+

Towards the end of Khan's shift, Kirk joins them in one of the Engineering labs. Spock utters a sedate greeting, Scott a more buoyant one, and Khan merely stares straight ahead, ignoring those eyes as they flit over him. Kirk comes to stand directly in Khan's line of vision, a shape of strong, fluid lines.

"So, Spock," a smile, abundantly affable, as he looks at his First Officer, "this is what the rest of us on the bridge lost you to. Too much fun to be had down here for you to say no, huh?"

"As you are well aware, Captain, 'fun' is a Human concept, one I am mercifully exempt from." Despite the words, there is no primness in Spock's voice, no true censure, his more austere self softened enough at the edges to accommodate Kirk's levity as best a Vulcan can. "Regardless, I will not deny that our work surrounding the cloaking device offers refreshing mental stimulation."

"Yeah, I thought it might, and as _you_ are well aware, only half of you is actually exempt so the other half's required by law to have fun. Sorry, those are the rules, I'm not the one who makes them." Kirk shrugs, his hands raised in faux-apology, and turns his easy smile towards Scott. "At least I can depend on Scotty here to be all fun all the time."

Scott grins broadly. "We're close to cracking it!"

"Already? I thought maybe it'd take longer without any friendly Klingons willing to talk us through their tech."

"Well," Scott glances at Khan and Kirk's smile is gone by the time he does the same, "I can't deny we've got good help. If we're on the right track with the modifications we're making—"

"Which we are," Khan throws in, laconic.

"—then there's no reason the cloaking device shouldn't work just as well with the _Enterprise_ as it does with a Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Khan thinks we can even make it completely undetectable to their tracking sensors. It'll be a damn shame, sir, when Starfleet confiscates the device."

Kirk pats Scott's shoulder, rueful. "Sorry, Scotty. You know why they have to. Look on the bright side – you get to be one of the first people to tinker with it." 

"Tinker with it we may," Spock says, "but it is concerning that the time constraint we are operating within forces us to implement the device without first carrying out a scrupulous series of tests. Sound theory does not always translate into flawless performance, no matter how much we wish it."

"It's a risk we'll simply have to take," Khan says. "Waiting will only make achieving the final outcome harder."

"He's right, Spock. We're just gonna have to cross our fingers and hope Murphy's Law gives us a break when we head to Altin II. That is, after all, where you plan on us going, isn't it, Khan? Why you've been talking to Sulu and Chekov?" Kirk raises both of his eyebrows archly.

"You almost sound suspicious, Captain, when all I am doing is what you so humbly requested of me. You see, the Federation has its hands tied up in defending the worlds it still has within its possession, but there is no reason for my crew and I to do the same. Our time would be more well spent freeing captured worlds instead. With the _Enterprise_ and a functioning cloaking device, we can begin regaining lost territory."

"Regain it 'til we hit Klingon space and then – what, take over _their_ worlds?"

"Why do that when we can simply head straight for the heart?"

Realisation sets in fast, the cogs in Kirk's mind spinning efficiently, wiping everything but the flash of epiphany from his face. "So that's why you want the cloaking device in the first place. Qo'noS."

"The same," Spock says, "must then apply to the weapon you proposed. The Energy-Dampener."

Kirk picks up the thread again, the pace of his voice gaining speed like a ship entering higher warp. "That's right. You said it neutralises Klingon technology without damaging it, disables their weapons, engines, and shields. So if we have a way to get close to Qo'noS undetected and a way to stop their armadas from attacking us once we reveal ourselves, even for a little while—"

"We'll have the Klingons in the palm of our hands," Khan finishes.

"Hold on a second here," Scott says, frowning. "What does that mean exactly, having the Klingons in the palm of our hands? Because I can only think of one thing and that's opening fire on their world unless they surrender."

"Well," Khan says, "naturally."

"A bluff, Mr. Scott," Spock says pointedly as if in correction, "as we will never truly do such a thing. We are not so lacking in moral decency."

"It's a bluff that could work," Kirk murmurs, fingers stroking absentmindedly at his jaw while he envisions the path Khan wants to set them on. He turns his glance to the side and Spock meets his gaze instantaneously. Something passes between them with an ease that is greater now than it had been when Khan first met them, their silent communication evidently broader and more assured in its vocabulary. It ends when Kirk nods decisively. "Looks like it's time to have another chat with Command. Spock, report to the bridge. We can leave the cloaking device in Scotty's capable hands for the time being."

"Yes, Captain. I will inform Lieutenant Uhura of your wishes." Spock clasps his hands behind him, sending a final, measured glance towards Khan as he departs.

It doesn't escape Kirk's attention and he shakes his head good-naturedly. "Think you might always be in the dog-house with him."

"I assure you, the feeling is mutual."

"Speaking of mutual feelings, I'm not exactly president of the Admirals' fanclub myself, but I'd appreciate it if you try not to tell them how inferior they are when we get the connection up and running."

"It would be easier to win a war."

Scott mutters what sounds like a lament for confiscated technology and amusement flashes across Kirk's face, though the reply on his lips is stalled when the _Enterprise_ careens violently, her walls shuddering through a vicious tremor that has them all stumbling.

The edge of the workbench behind him digs into Khan's spine, his hand finding purchase against it. Scott stumbles somewhere to his right while Kirk staggers towards him, colliding into Khan with a startled grunt. One hand lands close to Khan's against the workbench, the other clutching at his arm with a tight grip that will still never bruise.

Up close, Kirk's eyes take on a more brilliant hue, the concentrated, feverish blue that burns at the core of a flame. His lips are parted, breath light against Khan's mouth.

The ship jolts again, red light blinking on the walls, a siren wailing, and Kirk would have moved with it like a pendulum, if not for Khan's arm circling around his waist, fingers hooking over the hipbone and securing the solid bulk of Kirk's body to his own. The last time he'd been this close to someone not family, Khan recalls killing them.

Around his arm, Kirk's hold grows stronger. Crushing, by average human standards. The flat plain of his stomach moves against Khan's with each rhythmic breath. Khan takes in the clean, citrus smell of him. The warmth of his body, its odd, easy fit.

It's Scott's rushed, unintelligible yell and hurried exit from the lab that snaps Kirk back to reality. He shifts away from Khan with a brisk nod, takes out his communicator and barks into it a demand for answers, Sulu complying from the other side. The doors slide open for him, but at the last moment, Kirk turns around. "You should follow Scotty. He might need you. I'll catch up with you later."

"Of course."

"About that meeting, I mean," Kirk tacks on clumsily. "I'll see you later about the meeting." He grimaces like he regrets it, disappearing before Khan can bring attention to the redundancy in his words and ask why else Kirk would want to see him.

+

They used to spar in the open courtyards of their home, sometimes just two at a time, sometimes five or more all together until a single victor emerged. Khan had been a spectator mostly, content to watch their blades and laughter and friendly taunts cut bright through the air, only wading in if he felt particularly indulgent.

The _Enterprise_ 's gymnasium is hardly the sweeping, verdant spaces they're used to, but it's adequate. At six foot six, Narayan stands like an unassailable tower at the centre of the mats, waiting with enduring patience as Lakshmi and Rahul slowly circle him. Lakshmi strikes first, sharp, a viper launching itself out of its hiding place; Rahul attacks half a second later, the thunder to her lightning. Synchronization comes easy to them after so many years of familiarity, each push and pull and twist of their bodies effortlessly fluent and precise, no sense of wasted motion.

There is art here. Skill at its finest. Khan doesn't blame the small number of eyes observing the match from various corners. Distantly, he notes the footsteps that come to a stop next to him.

In the end, Narayan is down on one knee, pressing it against the dip of Lakshmi's spine, his right hand closed around Rahul's throat. Enough pressure and even the heavier density of their bones would give way eventually. "You both die," he says in his gentle rasp, setting them free. Old habit compels him to offer Lakshmi his hand as she rises to her feet gracefully. Out of Khan's entire crew, Narayan often jars strangers the most, his softer voice and natural inclination towards courtesy incongruous with the threat whispered by his intimidating stature.

Rahul laughs even as he narrows in on Narayan again, searching for any hints of weakness in all that muscle. His sly mouth, boxed in by an immaculately trimmed beard, makes the usual declaration: "We'll kill you eventually."

"If you say it often enough," Narayan says with an avuncular air about him, "it might even come true."

Lakshmi utters a curse without venom in her childhood Assamese. She shakes her head to shift the choppy hair obscuring her vision, just as regal in her drab training clothes as she had been in the tastefully cut dresses she'd once favoured. "Did we put on an entertaining show, my liege?"

Khan shrugs with one shoulder, feigning disinterest that she's shrewd enough to see through. "It'll do for now."

"We're saving our best tricks for the battlefield. You'll be pleased, then." Lakshmi redirects her attention and pins Kirk under her gaze like he's an animal sealed for preservation in the amber of her irises. "What about you, Captain? Will you be a kinder critic than my brother?"

When Khan had first walked in, he'd noticed Kirk dealing out fast, methodical blows to a punching bag, what little Khan could see of his face hard-edged and sharply focused. He carries the same focus still, the intense awareness travelling down into his muscles where they sit primed, carefully calibrated to receive and return aggression. It's possibly intentional and it's possibly an unconscious reaction, his body unable to do anything else when faced by four embodiments of ruthlessly controlled danger.

Kirk clears his throat lightly. Sweat darkens his hair, a wet sheen on his face, throat, bare arms. "I reckon I should just be glad you're on our side this time, seeing as it significantly reduces the chances of my own neck getting snapped."

Polite as he tends to be, Narayan does not easily share his smiles in front of strangers and only placid amusement surfaces onto his face as he meets Kirk's eye, acknowledging the words as a compliment.

Rahul says, "Reduces, but not eliminates?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves here."

"And yet you strike me as the sort of man who likes to tempt fate."

"That obvious, am I? Still, I've tempted fate enough for now by waking you all up."

"More than just a pretty face, then," Lakshmi says, but it's both lacking the full force of her charm and too much of a pedestrian remark to be real flirtation. Kirk appears to realise it, offering her a smile that is just as empty. "You are what we would call a  _chupa rustam_."

"What's that?"

"'Hidden warrior'," Khan explains. "Someone who is clever, though he doesn't necessarily appear it. A dark horse, you could say."    

"I'll put that in my Captain's Log, shall I? 'Khan and his crew called me dumb-but-not-dumb today. I think it means they like me.'"

"Don't be offended. We don't expect everyone to share our level of intelligence."

Kirk rolls his eyes, but Rahul, grinning, cuts in before he can respond. "We would've kept you company for longer, only duty calls. Our esteemed leader here should be company enough, regardless."

"Ease up on Dr. McCoy," Kirk says as the trio begin to move. "You baffle him on an ordinary day, but he's starting to think the lot of you assigned to Medical are plotting to overthrow him and assume command yourself."

"We'll assure the good doctor he's safe while there's a war to keep us busy," Rahul says and the doors close on Lakshmi's breezy chuckle. They're both as adept at mending life as they are at taking it away, their hands stained with the blood of those they have saved and those they have killed. McCoy doesn't understand it, his doctor's morality black and white and cut faithfully with the fine tip of an exoscalpel, but they don't expect him to.

"You're different around them," Kirk says. It sounds strangely loud, hanging in the air like a reverberation. Aside from them, the room is now empty. "It's not a huge change, but it's there. You're – at ease, I'd say. Content. I don't know why I'm surprised. You said it yourself, they're your family." He avoids looking at Khan, as if it costs him something to have uttered the words.

"It must make it difficult for you."

"Make what difficult for me?"

"Holding onto your image of us as two-dimensional villains."

"And you?" Kirk asks in return, which is as good as an agreement. "Are you starting to realise it? Because that's what I am to you, aren't I. Me and Starfleet, we're the villains in your story."

"How astute you are."

"More than just a pretty face, remember?" Kirk steps onto the mats, taking up a position roughly where Rahul had stood. "I notice you haven't answered my question, but I'm a nice guy, I'll let you think it over. In the meantime, wanna go a few rounds?"

"Why? There's nothing worthwhile in an easy opponent."

"I'm handing you a legit reason to wipe the floor with me here. You telling me you're not tempted at all?"

"Or," Khan situates himself opposite Kirk, "maybe you're the one looking for a legitimate reason to throw a punch at me. The most recent attack on the ship seems to have left you agitated."

"I really must be obvious these days," Kirk says, smirking, but the real sharpness is in his eyes, their steady concentration.

"I'm feeling gracious today, so I'll willingly give you something of an advantage by taking my sight out of the equation."

Kirk pulls perfunctorily at his combat-specific gloves and curls them into fists. "You say you're helping me out, but all I hear is how much more humiliating it's going to be when I lose to a guy who's not even looking."

"That, too, Captain." Khan closes his eyes, summoning the same patience Narayan had. There's little hardship in fighting blind with his other senses already reaching outwards, tracking the quiet shuffle of Kirk's footsteps, the shifts in the air between them.

When the first punches finally come, he already knows their trajectory and blocks with no difficulty. Kirk bides his time until striking again, an attempt as ineffectual as the last, and Khan falls into the easy rhythm of dropping Kirk to the floor again and again, only ever employing a meagre amount of his strength.

Kirk hauls himself onto his feet each time, driven by an obstinate tenacity Khan can admittedly approve of. As they progress, his jabs and kicks come quicker, relying less on strategy and more on pure instinct. Khan listens to the music of Kirk's aggression, its rapid, thundering beats, its sporadic crescendos when Kirk's brashness gets the better of him. He helps it along, prodding with flat condescension and obvious provocations until Kirk snaps and throws out an entire flurry of punches like guided missiles. Khan puts an end to it halfway through, snatching up Kirk's arms and, in two smooth manoeuvres, leaving him trapped against the mat, his wrists pinned to his spine by one of Khan's hands. Kirk turns his head to the side, teeth bared like an enraged animal. Cornered prey.

Kneeling over him, Khan leans down further towards the heat pouring from Kirk's body, their only point of contact where he holds Kirk's wrists. "It seems you're not immune to savagery, either," he murmurs indolently into an ear.

Beneath him, Kirk sucks in an audible breath. Bites out, "Let me go."

Khan obliges him. Kirk doesn't allow himself to remain on the floor and stands slowly. The reddened rings where Khan held him stand out markedly from the pink glow of his skin, soon to blossom into full bruises. "I guess I can't deny it. We all have it in us, this – streak of barbarism," he says eventually, staring straight ahead at the far wall. His expression grows distant, distracted with some thought or memory. "Maybe some never manage to find it, but it's there if you're pushed far enough."

"Surely your superiors wouldn't approve of their golden hero making such an admission?"

Kirk laughs cynically. "Golden hero? Is that what you think they call me?"

"If stopping Nero and saving Earth hadn't already made you one, I certainly would've."

"I'm not a hero. It might surprise you, but I've never thought of myself as one."

"Why? Too aware of your own flaws?"

"My flaws. I'm sure you've got a lot to say about my flaws."

"Your hypocrisy is the first thing that comes to mind."

That catches Kirk's attention like a hook, renders him speechless. He stares at Khan with unreadable eyes until his voice returns to him. "Care to elaborate on that a little?"

"I seem to recall," Khan says, "you offering my life to Alexander Marcus in order to secure the safety of your crew. He refused your offer, but if he had not, if he had gone on to demand the lives of my crew as would only make sense, what would you have done? Save us when you could not even keep your own people out of harm's way?"

"You'd've done the exact same thing. You did, in fact, put your people above mine."

"But that's no surprise, is it. We already know to what lengths I would go for them. You, on the other hand, hold it against me even when you know you're capable of the same actions as I am. You're conscious of the double standards and that is why, I'd wager, you don't call yourself a hero." 

"We would've found a way to save all of you," Kirk insists, like he truly believes this is the matter in question. "We would've."

Khan scoffs. "You haven't lost all of your naiveté, then." 

"I prefer to think of it as a refusal to accept defeat. Whatever you say, in your own way, I know you get that. You'd never accept something as impossible. Not you."

"Regardless, my point stands: you did what you thought you needed to do, knowing it was tantamount to sending me to a likely execution. It was necessity that fuelled your actions that day, not right or wrong. It's necessity that so many of our decisions come to, in the end."

"Necessity," Kirk spits out acidly, but he's not looking at Khan, not directing it towards Khan, his conflict with something visible only to himself. "You can justify anything if you call it necessary. You could steal, ruin, kill anyone. You could open fire on a roomful of largely innocent people. Wipe out half of a population if you thought it was _necessary_ for the survival of the other half."

"Why else do you think there's such a thin line between a hero and a villain? A fine line between you and I? We would do anything to protect our people. We _did_ do anything. Everything we could."

Kirk closes his eyes, a furrow in his brow. "You're right," he says quietly. "I do understand you. Why you think some of the things you do, I understand it. In the past, I've done things I'm not proud of because I had to, but—" the frown levels out, his eyes open again and his face a resolute wall, "—it doesn't mean I never regretted that I had to do them in the first place. It doesn't mean they're excused. We all have our reasons and we don't like to believe that those reasons are wrong, but there are some things that are unforgiveable, no matter how much we try to rationalize it."

Detachedly, Khan says, "Forgiveness is another matter altogether. It's of no importance unless it's forgiveness you want in the first place."

"Oh, right, I forgot." Kirk's mouth curls, bitter and thin. "You don't regret anything, so why would you even consider that forgiveness might be something you want."

"Is that what you want? For me to change and seek forgiveness? Your forgiveness for Christopher Pike's death?"

Kirk's facsimile of a smile drops like a guillotine. "You have no right to talk about him."

"So it is what you want, then?"

The distance between them vanishes in a heartbeat, Kirk grabbing at the collar of Khan's shirt, pushing himself close like he wants to scorch Khan with the burn of his sudden fury, brand it into him with the demanding press of his body. "You have no right," he says again, each syllable uttered precisely, an unyielding backbone holding them together.

Khan meets Kirk's anger with a steady gaze. "Go ahead, Captain. Indulge yourself and your instincts. Your streak of barbarism. There's no one else here to see it."

Kirk's fist tightens minutely. His knuckles dig into Khan's chest, four spiky points. He doesn't look away and neither does Khan and the moment stretches on for too long, too far beyond its rightful parameters.

Silence gathers, a strange, tense energy simmering through it, building and bearing down on them like sustained pressure, something with an almost physical form, and then—

Kirk's gaze drops. Falls onto Khan's mouth, where it lingers, flagrant as a physical caress, his dark heavy anger morphing abruptly into dark heavy hunger. His tongue darts out quickly, unconsciously, over his lower lip.

It's an evanescent flicker in time, lasting for barely longer than a second. Khan knows he will remember it with perfect clarity as if it had lasted for an age.

Pulling his hand away, Kirk steps back, glances elsewhere, heedless to the silent betrayal his treacherous body is still conducting. Musk richer, headier, than that of simple sweat wafts from his damp skin, slowly pervading the space separating them – Khan hasn't smelt arousal in a long time, but it's nothing he's forgotten.

He finds himself saying, "In ancient times, monsters were believed to be divine omens. Heralds of revelations."

"What?"

"You called me a monster once."

"There's nothing divine about you, even if you're arrogant enough to believe it. Whatever revelation you brought began and ended with exposing Marcus and Section 31. That's it."

"Captain," Khan chides gently. "It's disappointing when you insist on being deliberately obtuse."

"Don't talk to me like I'm a fucking child," Kirk snaps out.

Untroubled, Khan continues. "Of course, it's a much more personal revelation this time, so I can understand why you'd be reluctant to admit it out loud. It would amount to confessing a shameful weakness within yourself."

"Whatever mind-game you're playing right now, I'm not going along with it."

But Kirk doesn't leave. He doesn't force an end to the conversation.

So, Khan steps forward. He moves in until only a scant inch is all that stops their lips from melding into one shape, a kiss on the brink of becoming reality, teetering on the edges of that slight gap. Kirk, ever defiant, doesn't draw himself away, and it would be so easy, so terribly easy to seize his mouth, open it up like a flower to taste its warmth and pink softness and hear what sounds escape Kirk when his mouth is being taken. 

Khan's lips hover closely over the dark gold shadow on Kirk's cheek until he finds his ear, the same delicate curves he had spoken into before and into which he speaks again, his voice modulated into a lower, deeper, caressing sound: "I think we both know it's a little too late for that now, _James_."

Kirk's shiver is a fine thing, like the quieter tremors that sometimes run through his ship. His pulse beats out wildly against his neck and a fresh plume of lust blooms from his skin, the human body as always a house of contradictory, primitive impulses, wanting when it should know better to want, wanting even when it knows better to want.

Khan breathes it in, lets the hot smell flood his lungs.

"Don't," Kirk says hoarsely. "Don't say my name like that. Don't say it at all."

Khan looks at him, silent and knowing. There is no need for anything more.

+

After that, the air between them is irrevocably altered – charged, super-charged, saturated with what they now know.

That crackling denseness follows them into every room they occupy, burning slowly without ever reaching the end of its fuse because Kirk is careful to put on a show of pretence. When they speak, he meets Khan's gaze without hesitation, talks in a businesslike tone he must have perfected over numerous diplomatic meetings. When their conversation ends, he turns away and does not look over again unless it's to initiate another unavoidable exchange. It's all staunchly professional and it all makes Khan want to laugh.

Preoccupied as he'd been with ruling, he had never considered carnal pursuits a high priority. In his moments of indulgence, he'd tried women and men and found that he did not prefer one over the other. Deep-voiced and broadly built or slender and liquid-eyed, they all came apart beneath him in the same way, ceding utterly to the strength of his desire, the pleasure he ignited within their helpless, yearning bodies.

And now, the curious possibility that Kirk might do the same. Wants to, even, in some untamed part of him.  

The thought glows and smoulders like a piece of comet in the vault he places it in. Alone in his cabin, Khan draws out the memory, holds it up high for examination. He imagines what could have happened next and what will happen next. He takes it apart in his mind, reconfigures it in a multitude of combinations, futures better or worse.

"The atmosphere on this ship has changed," Malik says. Lightly, he touches the long spine of the plant in front of him, strokes its deep purple and gold leaves. They sway gently, trustingly, beneath his hand like loving children. "I sense anticipation. Determination. Fear."

"We're now twelve hours away from Altin II, as are the _Lexington_ and the _Defiant_. With all preparations complete, it is only a matter of waiting and picturing what will soon happen. The good and the bad."

"Our crew will be leading the ground assault, I take it?"

"And whatever ground assaults come after that. While we focus on the Klingon squads, Kirk and Spock's team will prioritise the lives and safety of the colonists."

They resume their path through the arboretum, passing small fruits hanging like colourful pebbles on dainty arms. On Earth, three hundred years ago, this walk would have been through the picturesque courtyard gardens and the lush palace conservatories that served as home to toxic and benign plants alike. This, Khan suspects, would be another surprise for Kirk and his crew, the fact that Khan's people know how to plant life, care for it patiently and help it flourish.

"After we retake Altin II, it will become more and more difficult. The Klingons will know to expect us and will fight back harder."

"Are you scared?" Khan asks wryly.

Malik makes a sound that straddles a scoff and a chuckle. "Fear is for others, not me." Then, "Commander Spock informed me of the Kobayashi Maru. Have you heard of it?"

"A no-win scenario, isn't it? Expose the cadet to the fear of certain death and failure in the hopes that they'll learn to accept it. In other words, a test we would have done poorly in."

"Without doubt. None of us learnt to be afraid of our own deaths in the same way we learnt everything else, but that was ultimately what Heisen intended for us. Not acceptance of fear, but a complete lack of it." 

"I'll admit it was one of his less asinine ideas," Khan says. "Did Spock tell you how Kirk performed?"

"Kirk made three attempts. On the third try, he reprogrammed the test itself and turned an unbeatable scenario into one where victory was possible. A solution we both can agree with, I think."

Khan sees the flash of blue eyes again, hears, " _I prefer to think of it as a refusal to accept defeat. Whatever you say, in your own way, I know you get that."_ He concedes, "It sounds like something we would do," and is interrupted a second later by the click of his communicator and Scott's request to join him in Engineering. 

"You're very popular these days," Malik says after Khan's communicator falls silent.

"Something tells me 'popular' is not quite the right word." 

Malik's lips twitch. "Until later, then?"

"Later."

Khan leaves Malik to the flora that tranquilly accept his attention and retraces his steps to the arboretum's exit. He manages only as far as one step outside before coming to a standstill, breathing in deeply. Citrus and sandalwood, still zinging fresh.

Khan looks down the sleek corridor, towards the turbolift at the end, where a slash of gold peeks through the gap between the closing doors.

+

Twelve hours later, they retake Altin II.

The Klingons discover them too late, already dying one after another by the time they notice the strangers striking from the shadows. Khan's seventy two operate like a single body, a perfect system, and the pride and possessiveness is thick as blood in his chest, power snapping livewire-fast through his body. 

The streets of this haggard town flow into each other and he and his crew flow down them, phaser fire darting from their hands in luminous hails. They kill those who refuse to surrender and capture those who reluctantly acquiesce, herding their bristling prisoners into what serves as the colony's town square.

One Klingon spits out a harsh, guttural string of words and Vidya laughs, saying, "The more you want us dead, the more accomplished we'll feel, so, by all means, keep talking."

The colonists – gaunt, brittle creatures – are slow to emerge out into the open, tentative until they see the gold, blue, and red blend of Starfleet uniforms, until Khan says, "The planet is back in Starfleet hands, Captain," and Kirk, kind, gentle, firm all at once, says, "You hear that? You're free now. You're safe."

A shocked sort of relief creeps over those wary faces, eyes glinting wet. Their bodies seem weaker now, more vulnerable without the weight of their fear to anchor them into a grim reality. Khan turns away, lets them shed their tears and droop like feeble plants towards the medical officers approaching them. McCoy meets his gaze briefly, nods at him.

"I'll carry out another sweep of the town," he tells Spock at a lower volume. "You should send for Lieutenant Uhura. She might make something of the communication station here."

"I concur. You may proceed."

The second sweep is predictably uneventful, their own footsteps the only sign of activity, and once they reach the far edge of town where infrastructure melts into empty land, Khan sends his crew back the way they came. Malik asks no questions, taking lead seamlessly and leaving Khan to stand alone at that boundary, surveying the silhouettes of distant hills sitting against an indigo sky, dark valleys snaking secretively between them, ending somewhere unknown.

He breathes in something that isn't the _Enterprise_ 's sterile air for once, something that doesn't smell as if it is manufactured in some way. Lacking. Real air, with a real breeze to it. One day, he'll have a world of his own where every breath will be full of air like this and there will be hills with secret valleys propped up against the night.

"Hey."

"You walk loudly, Captain. What if there had been a Klingon hidden somewhere, waiting to attack?"

"You mean to tell me you're not one of the best soldiers ever after all and it's completely possible for a Klingon to slip by you?"

"They can certainly try," Khan says, turning around. Kirk is an arm's length away from him, an unusually close distance considering the amount of effort he's spent imbuing their interactions with impersonal civility. "Shouldn't you be preoccupied with carrying out protocol?"

"There are two other Captains there and _Spock_. I'm sure they can handle things without me for a minute." Khan doesn't offer a reply and Kirk says, "You weren't with the others."

"Did you come looking, thinking I'd gotten lost?"

"Hardly. I doubt you can even get lost anyway, with that super-brain of yours."

"And you would be right. What is it you need, then?"

Kirk shakes his head. There are no injuries today, his body entirely unharmed. "I don't need anything. I'm good, I'm more than good, actually." He laughs, strained, and throws his arms apart in an expansive gesture. "We did it. We fucking did it."

"I noticed."

" _Shit_." Kirk presses the heel of his palms to his eyes. "We're still alive."

Khan doesn't roll his eyes, but the urge is there. "Of course we are."

"We did it," Kirk says again, smiling broad, incandescent, the smile he offers freely to his most trusted. This is the first time Khan has had its brightness directed towards him. "This is just the beginning, Khan. We're going to take back everything we lost and they're not going to stop us. You know why? Because for as much as the Klingons want to beat us, conquer us, we want to survive and live _even more._ And they're going to learn that."

His unshakeable conviction is difficult to miss. Kirk speaks as if he bears some power of prescience and is already creating their future with each word he gives voice to. 

It's a future Khan just so happens to agree with. "Yes. They are."

Kirk glances to the side, deliberating, then returns to Khan. "I saw you," he says. His voice is gruff now. Husky. "When you were still in front of us, I mean. You just tore through anything that got in your way and wouldn't move. Thought I'd've gotten used to it by now."

"I'm not someone others get used to, Kirk. I never have been."

Kirk steps closer. Stops. He's clearly restless, adrenaline and the exhilaration of victory still crackling like lightning flashes in his eyes. They're lit up in the moonlight, resplendent; Khan can see every dazzling speck in them. "Is that how it's going to be 'til the end? Are you going to tear your way right to Qo'noS?"

"You'll be with me every step of the way," he replies, watching Kirk intently watch him. "You can find out for yourself."

"Yeah," Kirk murmurs, even deeper now, shuffling even closer, and it's the equivalent of a switch thrown, everything pulling together mosaic-perfect in Khan's mind: it isn't just victory, just adrenaline, flashing in Kirk's eyes. It's the storm that's been steadily building between them, the storm that's now on the cusp of breaking and _does_ finally break with Kirk saying, "Yeah, I will," and pressing his mouth to Khan's for a firm, unbreathing moment. 

Khan contemplates not responding. Contemplates dragging this out, making Kirk work for it, observing the reactions.

He pulls Kirk tight against himself instead and the kiss turns hard and heavy, a fight, as if their encounters with the Klingons outside was just a trifle and the real battle is here between them, their hungry, clashing mouths.

Kirk entangles his hands in Khan’s hair, grip tight, stinging, and Khan presses in with his tongue, imperious in this as he is in everything else. He licks at the sweet softness sitting inside that brazen mouth, that hot, burning, frantic mouth too clever for its own good, and a vicious flare of proprietary desire arcs through his nerves, searing away all but the urge to taste everything, consume everything, _make it all his_  – so he does, one hand on Kirk's jaw to hold Kirk's mouth open as Khan besieges it on and on, deep and thorough.

Kirk bites at him when he can, draws in quick, gasping half-breaths when he can, but never once fully breaks away from Khan’s uncompromising assault. He pushes against him, insistent, like he's staging a challenge and trying to merge them both together at the same time and the smell of his arousal pours from his skin in thick clouds, clingy, humid air that traps Khan in its incorporeal hands. Khan shifts them through it, pressing forward until they slam into a wall, his thigh shoved in between Kirk's legs, unrelenting against the solid shape of his cock. Kirk's head falls back, at last forcing a separation between their locked mouths. He lets out only a small moan, hips moving in a rough, involuntary grind.

There's no time to consider this strange quietness from a man who speaks more often than not, when his body is more than articulate about its wants and the sight of his long, smooth neck unveiled is a clawed invitation spearing into everything atavistic in Khan, letting them bleed free. He sucks fleeting kisses down that column without thinking, snaring Kirk’s pulse point between his lips, sinking his teeth around the pounding beat of it.

"Fuck," Kirk cries out finally, a vibration that Khan feels beneath his mouth. Kirk slips his hands beneath Khan's shirt to clutch at his bare back, faint sparks bursting over Khan's spine where nails scrape heedlessly over the slope.

Slowly, with one last suck, he relinquishes Kirk's throat, darkly fulfilled by the mark left behind, sitting like a livid burn sitting against the pale of Kirk’s skin. He cups Kirk's ass, the generous swell of it immensely satisfying in his palms; rearranges himself to bring their hips together and for a sharply blissful moment, the hard lines of their cocks are in perfect alignment. Khan groans, deep. Hears Kirk's scratchy echo of it, his nails digging deeper into Khan's skin. 

Kirk's hips begin rolling with a dirty finesse that Khan matches smoothly, friction and pleasure slicing between them, into them, in unending, electrifying currents. Each one burns jaggedly through Khan's surging blood, burns like the inside of Kirk's mouth when he licks into it again, their kisses still hard and heavy, still a fight— but it's not enough. It's not what he wants, Khan realises, and what he wants is to watch Kirk's face as he's thrown over the edge and into pure sensation. What he wants is to throw Kirk over that edge himself.

Pulling away brusquely, he ignores Kirk's instinctive protest to open up Kirk's trousers, licking a stripe over the palm of his own hand. Kirk's cock is a thick, wet, needy thing that leaps in the cage of Khan's fingers the moment they close around it and bucks into the even pressure he begins to dole out precisely, the occasional stroke over the taut skin. "God, yes," Kirk pants out, "yes," and doesn't say anything more, just gasps softly, moves blindly, eyes closed but face enticingly open.

Khan memorises each play of muscle he sees, each blaze of feeling. He swipes a leisurely thumb over the distracting fullness of Kirk's bottom lip, pitching his voice deliberately low and languorous to say, "Aroused and wanton is a good look on you, James. If I'd known, I would've done this sooner." It’s when he twists his hand around the moist head of Kirk’s cock and answers the infuriating lure of that lip with a considerably gentle bite that Kirk makes an unfathomable sound like Khan's just clicked a trigger, his body tautening into a slight arch as it spends itself warm and wet into Khan's hand. His lashes droop down towards the flush high across his cheeks, those jewel eyes half-lidded, lounging in satisfaction, and his mouth – his mouth is bruised, wine red, slick, a temptation all on its own. Khan wants it fighting against his again, its treasures unlocked for him to plunder.

He lets go of Kirk's softening cock, dragging his hand out and up the skin of Kirk's stomach, wiping, staining, measuring the subtle tremor that sweeps through Kirk. His own cock is still hard, arousal far from abated, but that is insignificant. The wall is cold against his hands when he places them on either side of Kirk's head and that, too, is insignificant.

Several moments pass, but they don't speak. The aftershocks ease their grip on Kirk without lingering and his focus restores itself, the honesty of his face in that moment of release melting away. Still, he says nothing, only stares back, sober and flinty-eyed.

Khan whispers, "Captain," in a softly mocking lilt that has its own whisper behind it: _I've caught you out_.

A muscle in Kirk's lower jaw ticks. He rights his trousers, pulls out his communicator. Without looking away, he speaks into it and, seconds later, vanishes into swirling light, leaving only empty air between Khan's arms.

He’s fleeing, Khan thinks. Turning his hand over, he looks at what's left of the come on his fingers and runs his tongue over his lower lip. The taste left there is new and sweet — the juice of a forbidden fruit. _Kirk_.

Slow and inexorable, primal hunger unfurls throughout him, a beast roused from its centuries-long sleep, seeking satiation.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) "The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves. And now I am eager to die into the deathless", 'Ocean of Form', Rabindranath Tagore again (his own translation bc dude is badass) since what is my life if not a Tagore appreciation life. He wrote a lovely spiritual poem, never thinking it'd one day be used by a guy who just wanted to go back to sleep.
> 
> 2) "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" – Oppenheimer showing off his neat poetic translation skillz while quoting the _Bhagavad Gita_. I have poor self-control, so, really, there was no way this quote wasn't going to somehow make it into this fic. At least it's not more Shakes--- Wait.
> 
> 3) "All the universe is a stage" sounds awfully similar to "All the world's a stage"...
> 
> 4) "The insider who knows all the secrets can bring down Lanka [a very prosperous city in Hindu mythology]" is a Hindi proverb, according to that fount of wisdom, Wiki.
> 
> 5) Energy dampening weapons are mostly 24th century things, I know, but shhhh, just go with it, shhhh, don't break the fic. Khan's 'master-plan' is ridiculously simplistic (sorry, bro, for not doing your genius-ness justice) and the way you should approach it is by _not thinking about it at all_. That way I can just [set phaser to erase all plotholes]
> 
> 6) "streak of barbarism" is from 'Space Seed', ofc.
> 
> 7) There is not nearly enough of Khan and Jim angrily fucking against all surfaces in this chapter, what kind of a shipper do I think I am?? I shall endeavour to rectify this shameful situation in the next part.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Could it be an update finally? Yes, it's an update finally! As usual, I'm very grateful to everyone who left kudos and really amazing comments! I think I re-read them all and cried tears of joy around a billion times, so thank you! This installment is quite long (17.6 words or something, so take a tea-break somewhere in the middle) and was honestly a struggle to write. I’m not entirely happy with it, but there’s only so long I can re-write and glare at it for. I just hope you enjoy and that it makes up for the ridiculous wait.
> 
> (Just a heads-up: in this chapter, there’s a very brief discussion of whether or not Khan and/or his fellow crewmembers were sexually abused as children. It starts with "Khan answers McCoy’s question"and ends with '“...might have even loved us.”' The answer is no, they weren’t.)

Kirk sits at the head of the table, the consummate captain once more. He takes them through the debriefing, his voice steady and the throat it spills from unblemished. Khan’s teeth ache with the impulse to mark the bruise back into place against Kirk's pulse. 

Uhura says, “The transmissions I intercepted all point to the same thing: Klingon reinforcements aren't heading towards Altin II at all but towards Ktaris to shore up defenses there. If we can get there before them, or at least try to, we have better chances of securing Ktaris."

"Agreed, Lieutenant. Speed is the only way we can hold onto the advantage we have for a little longer and Ktaris is fortunately close enough for us to make it.”

Scott leans forward in his chair, shooting a glance down the table towards Khan. “We’ll do our best in Engineering to ramp up warp-speed as much as we can.”

“I’d certainly appreciate that. Once we know which other ships will be joining us and we’re all cleared to leave Altin II, we’ll need to depart without delay. I’ll be scheduling a meeting to discuss strategy very soon. Unless there’s anything else—" Kirk pauses to allow for any interjections, "—I'll let you guys go and get some well-deserved rest. Thank you for your hard work; I’m incredibly proud and grateful."

“Just doing our jobs, Captain,” Sulu says with a small, quietly satisfied smile.

The chairs are pushed back and vacated. Khan also stands, ignoring any subtle look he receives. He’s well aware that he is still a tolerated presence at these meetings. “I’ll join you shortly,” he says as Scott passes him by. His eyes are on Kirk and McCoy, who are at the tail-end of the stream, moving at a distinctly slower pace.

“Come by Sickbay so I can take a look at you," McCoy is saying.

Kirk shakes his head. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“Uxtrii said you grabbed a dermal regenerator and vanished, in and out like a hurricane.”

“It was just a few scrapes I could’ve handled myself. Seriously, I’m fine. That regenerator’s back where I found it, by the way.”

“Yeah, it’s the regenerator I’m worried about here. You’d say you were fine even if you were dangling off of a cliff edge with your ass on fire.”

“Charming image there, Bones. Hey, did you hear that sound just now? Sounded like someone stealing your stash of hypo-sprays. Better get over there fast if you want to catch them in the act.”

“Astounding, Jim. How do you find the time to be a captain when you're busy thinking up of such witticisms?"

Kirk grins, his eyes crinkling. "I'm just that gifted.” His grin loses its warmth, fades altogether once he notices Khan waiting.

There’s a shift in the air again, noticeable like a drop in temperature.  

Kirk says, “Bones, go ahead.”

McCoy’s brow creases. He resumes moving only after Kirk prompts him again. "Don’t forget to drop by Sickbay."

"Fine. I'll let you know when I can make it."

The acquiescence, despite being what he'd sought for, seems to only trouble McCoy. He glances between them one last time before finally leaving.

To his credit, Kirk doesn’t bother with more pretense. “It shouldn’t have happened and it can't happen again.”

“But it will,” Khan replies. He looks at that mouth, its plushness, the taste of it still ripe on his tongue. He wants to take it in other ways - with his fingers, his cock.

“I didn’t know seeing the future was one of your many talents.”

“I don’t need to see the future. I just need to see you and I can, Captain. I see what you hide." Casually, Khan places his hand onto the table. Kirk’s eyes flicker, drawn downwards to the fingers that had touched and stroked him towards a bright point of ecstasy. Khan wonders if he's remembering it now, reliving it. "Do  _you_  see?"

Fissures run through Kirk's composure, breaking it enough to let through something more brittle and fractious. “Do you have an actual reason for talking to me?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Do you have further news on the materials I requested?”

“You couldn’t have asked me that during the meeting? No, of course not. Then you wouldn’t have an excuse to corner me afterwards, right? No fun in that.”

“How helpless you make yourself out to be. But maybe that's exactly what you are. You never entered the arboretum yesterday; maybe you thought I wouldn't notice you'd been outside. Were you looking for me or was it that you simply couldn’t resist seeking me out?"

"Regarding the  _Excalibur_ ," Kirk says pointedly, “I'll get Uhura to make contact with them and confirm when we should expect to see them. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He stalks past, full of leashed tension.  

“This doesn’t have to be a moral quandary, you know," Khan says. "It could simply be a case of mutual physical gratification. Nothing more, nothing less."

He doesn’t expect a reply and he doesn’t get one, the doors signaling Kirk’s departure, but Khan has planted the seed. The rest is just a matter of waiting to see if it will take.  

+

“Don’t tell me this is becoming your favorite place, too," McCoy says, banishing the quiet of Observation Deck 3.

Pressing the edge of the knife into his apple, Khan begins steadily removing the bright green skin. A scent seeps out, light and fresh. “I wasn’t aware that this was one of your preferred locations.”

“It isn’t,” McCoy says cryptically. “I survive on this boat by pretending space doesn’t exist outside of it.”

“What a strange place your mind must be.”

“Look who’s talking. I’m not here to discuss my mind, anyhow. Something’s going on with Jim and I have a feeling it's got to do with you."

Khan returns his gaze to the viewport and the hazy path to Ktaris beyond.

McCoy takes his silence as a cue to continue. "It has to be you. You're the only new factor. I've seen him stressed before, but this isn't stress. This is something different."

"I presume the only reason you’re talking to me is that Kirk refuses to give you the answers you want and it's forced you to come to me. That must be galling."

"You wanna tell me something useful or not?"

His knife still moving, Khan considers his reply.  _You of all people know what it is to do anything to save someone you care about_ , McCoy had said, tired but lacking regret, hours after Khan's blood had already been infused with the contaminated river running through Kirk's veins. "I suppose there is something I know that you might find interesting."

"I'm all ears."

"When your captain died—" Khan looks back to watch how McCoy's features stiffen, as if Khan has just pressed his finger to a still raw laceration, "—you chose to use my blood rather than risk failing to wake one of my crewmembers. You chose wisely, but I don't think you're fully aware of exactly how wise that choice was."

"What's that supposed to mean? And what does it have to do with what's going on with Jim?"

"Nothing at all. That particular answer you'll have to force out of him yourself, I'm afraid."

A protest evidently leaps to the tip of McCoy's tongue, but then he stifles it and sighs, apparently realizing the futility of his attempts. Mouth down-turned, he stares at Khan for a long moment and brings himself to ask, "Why was it such a wise choice?"

The apple skin separates cleanly, a neat circle that Khan slides into his mouth and patiently chews before saying, "If you had used blood belonging to anyone who wasn't me, James T. Kirk would still be dead today." He makes two meticulous incisions, presents the thin slice to McCoy. "Would you care for a piece?"

Plunged into silence and surprise, McCoy doesn't register the offer. Khan retracts his hand, eating the slice himself as he watches McCoy find his words.

"You're telling me you're the only one with blood that works like that."

"I am."

" _How_?"

Khan cuts out further slices, eats them off the blade, tang after tang bursting in his mouth. "I agreed to certain experiments that were meant only for me."

"Special even back then, huh?"

"Of course. Lucky for you that you stole blood from the right person. Breaching ethics, crossing the line. It seems to be a recurring theme here.”

“It’s not the same as what you did and you know it.”

“True, but it doesn't have to be.”

"You never said anything about that at the time. Just looked at me like you were a damn Vulcan − no, not even that. At least with them, I'd've likely gotten some elaborate insult."

"If I'd been truly displeased, you would have known it. But it won't be happening again, Dr. McCoy. My blood is not for your use. You will simply have to continue encountering and enduring death."

McCoy doesn't argue. "We never told the higher ups what really happened to Jim that day or how I really saved him. Worst case scenario, someone would target you and your crew for it, so we kept it between as few of us as possible."

"I thought that must've been the case,” Khan says, observing McCoy’s reflection in the viewport. “Otherwise I might never have been put back to sleep at all."

McCoy’s response comes at once, his face twisted with a fierceness that passes into his words. "We don't go in for exploitation. For torture. Section 31 might have, but we put an end to them. I know Jim's told you."

"He has. I would say you have my gratitude, but there's no reason I should thank you for doing what should have been done in the first place."

"We're not looking for your thanks, either. Some of us are capable of doing the right thing without needing gratitude for it."

Khan simply says, “Good.”

"You talk about them the experiments so casually. It's hard to tell if you feel anything at all about them, but I guess that's how you prefer it."

"Does my casualness bother you?"

"Why doesn't it bother  _you_? You were all children, for God's sake. Abducted children with no way to escape, subjected to the whims of loony scientists. There's trauma in that or were you genetically enhanced to overcome that, too?" McCoy's voice takes on a sarcastic note towards the end out of habit, but the crease in his brow is purely meditative. He looks at Khan like he might at a body on his operating table, wearing the dissecting eye of a physician cutting the flesh open, methodically examining its inner architecture.

Khan bears it with a faintly amused smile. "Are you psychoanalyzing me, Doctor? Do I seem traumatized to you?"

"Maybe you're just real good at compartmentalizing. You can't tell me none of you were scared and wanting to escape."

"There were some who did, yes. But I spoke to them and it didn't last."

"You convinced them to stay?"

"You speak of escape as if there was something to escape to. Mothers and fathers. Homes. A life of safety and comfort. But these were not things any of us had even before we were taken, so why not stay? Why not gain everything that we could gain and learn everything there was to learn? Why not make for ourselves a life that would be better than any we would've found in the slums we came from?"

Reluctantly, McCoy says, "I guess that's not a bad recruitment speech. Was that when you became their leader?"

And when they had begun forming the bonds that still pull them together now, like they are all sinews of the same body, rivers leading to the same ocean. In many ways, they became more than they were ever meant to be, moving beyond their circumscribed lives and the bounds that had dictated they were only to be a functioning regiment, a unit in a larger army, but nothing more. Not friends, not family.

Then again, they never did have any trouble with breaking rules.

Khan answers McCoy’s question with a nod and after an uncharacteristic show of hesitation, McCoy asks, "Did they – the people who watched over you – did they..." He carries on with sober determination. "Did they do anything else? Other than experiments?"

"That’s a rather bold question. Is your heart so willing to bleed that it'll do so even for the ones you despise?"

"You don't need to answer if you don't want to.”

"No," Khan says. "They didn’t. We were their life's work, the most precious things they had. Naturally they had precautions to prevent our escape—" a sensation like a spike piercing through his brain when he had dug his way outside, Heisen smiling afterwards as he informed Khan about the implant, "—but the idea of deliberately harming us, defiling us, was almost sacrilege. In their own way, they might have even loved us."

"Love? That's not any kind of love I've ever heard of."

"It doesn't matter much now, does it. They're long dead. Their work has outlived them, maybe not how they’d envisioned we would, but nonetheless, they are dust and we are not." McCoy offers no reply, retreating into his own thoughts, and the quiet from before returns. His eyes settle on the last sliver of the apple in Khan's hand, remaining there long enough that Khan eventually asks, "Have you changed your mind about wanting a piece? I should think eating it in front of you has sufficiently demonstrated that it isn't poisoned."

"That's a whole lotta comfort from a man with an advanced immune system. No, I don't want a piece, I'm just remembering something from my Academy days, that's all." Heaving another sigh, McCoy rubs a hand over his face. "You know something, but you won't tell me because you want to enjoy holding it over me, is that it?"

"Or it could just be a matter that should remain between Kirk and me."

"So you want to enjoy holding it over Jim."

Khan raises his knife to his mouth and slips the final slice onto his tongue.

"Great," McCoy mutters. “Just great.”

+

They fight two concurrent battles, one in space and one on Ktaris.

Under the safety of the cloak, the  _Enterprise_  launches the initial infiltration into the planet and Khan and his crew do what they do best, leading the effort to overwhelm the first Klingon base within a day.

Surviving remnants of the Ktarian resistance slip out of their hiding places to establish contact. Kirk and his fellow captains welcome them readily, sharing rations, intel and strategies but turning guarded when Sub-Commander Shillen fixes her yellow, slitted eyes to Khan and inquires why a number of Human soldiers suddenly possess greater levels of strength and speed than she has ever known them to have.

Khan expects Kirk to take it upon himself to answer, only Kirk does nothing more than look back at him carefully. It’s either a test or a show of trust, more likely a bit of both. Khan doesn’t let the opportunity escape him and provides a concise, sanitized explanation, setting down the stones that will pave a new alliance for his people. In the tense hours between long skirmishes, his crew does the same, learning the Ktarian tongue and culture, studying their medicine, their weaponry, delicately acquiring friends.

A series of toppled Klingon bases later, they finally break through into Djensa, Ktaris’ northern capital and the last remaining captured city.

It rains during the battle, a gentle drizzle that prods open flames into strange dances. Cool trails slink down Khan's skin where his jacket doesn't cover him.

“Not like the monsoons we’re used to,” Narayan says, removing the mouth of his weapon from the shredded chest it had fired into. It’s a casual remark, empty of sentimentality.

Khan understands. Any affection he’d had for the planet of his birth is now as long gone as those ephemeral years they'd spent on it. He bends down to pull his knife free from where it’s embedded within the teeth of a ribcage and tucks it back into the sheath at his belt.

“Monsoons are more common in Southern Ktaris,” Shillen tells them, looking at the bodies at their feet. A large-boned, tall woman, she stands at equal height to Khan when he rises to his feet again. “You and your people fight like demons,” she says, sounding too grateful for it to be a recrimination.

“Thank you,” Narayan says. He continues on down the road in front of them, calm as a man going for a walk. “You have a beautiful city.”

Djensa is a latticework of green and silver, thick trees lining stone pathways and pale structures like an emerald barricade hemming in ghosts. Even with the wreckage, it’s not a city lacking in visual appeal, a sense of order and symmetry prevailing in the buildings that still remain.

“It used to be more beautiful, of course.” The accent in Shillen’s Standard thickens, tugged free by the environment around her. Khan recalls that Djensa is her home-city. “I’m merely glad it hasn’t been reduced to rubble.” The shriek of dismantled metal and slow, dull thuds ahead gives her pause. “Although perhaps it still could be.”

They pick up pace, slipping into a run, until a yell Khan identifies instantly slows him down.

“Kirk,” Narayan confirms.

“He might need assistance,” says Shillen.

“I’ll take care of it,” Khan decides. “Clear this area and regroup with the others at the fountain. We’ll meet you there." He turns back, following the noise, and he sees Hendorff first, quietly shepherding away civilians. Then his eyes land on Kirk.  

Somehow, Kirk has somehow lost the phaser rifle he’d beamed down with. It’s only with curled, vulnerable fists that he lunges forward, striking vehemently against bodies much larger and stronger than his own, fighting like there is no possibility that he could ever lose, no delicacy to his bones, no danger to his fragile Human life.

You could be better, Khan thinks as he raises his rifle and fires off precise blasts. I could show you. His hands on Kirk’s golden body, crafting it into something more lethal, teaching it to fight the way demons fight, teaching it so much more.

Kirk stumbles back to avoid the bodies that would otherwise collapse onto him. His head snaps to the side to see whose assistance he’s received, ferocity still emblazoned across his face, the same ferocity that had been lightning in his eyes when he’d pressed his mouth to Khan’s at Altin II. Khan remembers saying  _“I see what you hide”_ and Kirk makes a small, aborted movement, a flinch barely contained, like he does, too. The wildness in him vanishes, the chaotic light of a candle snuffed out.

“A streak of barbarism can be so helpful at times,” Khan says.

“Thanks for the help,” Kirk replies, the only answer safe enough for him to give. Red gleams from his split lip. His lashes flicker to keep the rain out of his eyes. He wears his exhaustion as plainly as his bruises.

Handing over his rifle, Khan snatches up a Klingon disruptor from the ground. “Was that the last of the civilians with Hendorff?”

“Yeah. That’s one less thing to worry about now.”

“Then we can head onto the fountain.”

“Sure, let’s—what? What is it?”

Khan tips his head in the direction of a faint whine of a sound. It grows increasingly louder, until it dawns on him exactly what it is and he has Kirk in his grasp within the second, ignoring Kirk’s protest to tuck him beneath himself and throw them both away from the eruption’s reach. Debris and a deep billow of smoke hurtle over them.

Kirk is like heated stone beneath Khan, a still, solid length of warmth, his broadness encapsulated neatly under the shield of Khan’s body. “You’re heavier than you look,” he mutters, but keeps his head carefully bent close to the ground, the strong line of his back tense against Khan’s chest. Khan hears Kirk’s rapid heartbeat, all other sounds - another explosion, the fracturing of buildings - existing in the space between each of those frantic thumps.  

“I hope I’m not making you too uncomfortable, Captain," Khan says, mouth at Kirk's ear. "This is most likely not how you first imagined you would end up under me.”

“God, I hate you," Kirk mutters. 

“Next time you want to seek me out, try to make sure I’m in my quarters first.” Khan picks out Klingon words and heavy footsteps heading their way. “Now I’m assuming you remember the path to the fountain, so get ready to run when I tell you to.”

“Alone? And of course I do – I studied those maps just as much as you did.”

“I’ll get rid of anyone tailing you.” He hooks a hand under one of Kirk’s arms, ready to haul him up. “ _Go_.”

They bolt off the ground, Khan none too gently shoving Kirk forwards, and Kirk runs.

Khan whirls around, rapidly unleashing disruptor fire, but quickly he hears footsteps again, this time at his back and then there are phaser beams slashing through the air.  

“I’m not about to let you take the credit for everything, you know,” Kirk says, just before he ducks to avoid the whirl of a bat’leth.

Through the lingering smoke, the shapes of their enemies rush towards them. Tired, injured, lacking Khan’s enhanced eyesight, Kirk is at more of a disadvantage and Khan almost unconsciously falls into tracking Kirk, drawing an invisible circle around him and cutting short any Klingon who tries to breach it. Those blasts leave his disruptor quicker; those kicks land harder and break bone. If Kirk notices what Khan is doing, he doesn’t mention it.

By the end, Kirk’s lip has resumed bleeding. He touches his arm briefly like it pains him, but also shrugs and says, “It could be worse. At least my shoulder isn’t dislocated this time or...” His voice trails off. Khan breaks his stare, looking away from Kirk’s hurt mouth. Kirk says, “Weren’t we supposed to be heading to the fountain?” and begins walking without waiting for a reply.

Khan falls into step beside him and listens to Kirk contact Hendorff, asking after his location and safety.

The fountain sits close to the city’s central plaza, an ornate structure drained of water and somehow unscathed despite the volley of energy blasts darting from every corner around it. Behind a pillar, they find Shillen crouched down beside Spock.

“There is good news,” she tells them. Though she does not smile, her severe features have become noticeably lighter. “Only the three sectors of the city beyond the fountain remain in enemy hands. They are all that stand between my people and our freedom.”

“That certainly  _is_  good news,” Kirk says with evident relief.

“The end is near, Captain.”

“If Bones were here, he’d grumble something about famous last words.”

“Indeed,” Spock says. “He would also comment on the fact that you are injured.”

“So are you, Spock, but we can both still hold our rifles, right?” Kirk grips said rifle tight enough for his knuckles to turn white beneath the ragged bruises. “Right. So we just need to get to the other side of the fountain. No problem. We can do that.” 

Khan glances around, assesses the situation, lets a plan formulate. "Why else are we here, Captain?"

The rain continues to fall, striking harder by the time they've pushed into the final sector and claimed their victory. It chips away at the grime on Khan’s face, the strangely enticing touch of blood still at Kirk’s mouth.

+

Faces tight with grief and purpose, the Ktarians begin tending to their damaged world. Khan catches a number of them looking up at the sky like they expect the Klingons to return any second, but they smile, too, faintly, when orange-winged, singing birds begin returning to the trees.

“They have not been seen for so long,” Shillen explains. “But they are a sign, like the Terran Spring, of renewal and hope.”

It is colder, however, than any Terran Spring Khan has ever known and the rain is frequent. Outside of meetings, he spends most of his hours working in the downpour as part of the cleanup crews, lifting with his hands what they’d typically need the machines for. The  _Enterprise_  is perched in orbit, a sleek, silver guard dog alongside a number of Fleet ships, and Khan returns to her every night with ash-grey fingertips.

Caught up in overseeing the distribution of aid supplies for Djensa, Kirk tends to make an appearance in the middle of the evenings, assisting during the last hour. His movement is no longer hindered by flashes of pain, only an occasional shiver provoked by the chill in the air. Sometimes Spock accompanies him, other times, like tonight, it’s McCoy, whose stern gaze ensures no one is pushing themselves beyond their capacity.

“Do I also have your permission to continue working?” Khan asks wryly.  

“Oh, yes, because you’re the sort of man who’s interested in permission,” McCoy replies, his hand hovering over the screen of his tricorder to shield it from the rain. Kirk’s small chuckle draws McCoy’s attention towards him. “You didn’t used to be very different in that regard, Jim. Still aren’t, sometimes.”

“Better to ask forgiveness, Bones, and I wouldn’t be me if I was a stickler for all the rules. You can’t argue with my results, can you?"

“Give me a minute while I try to come up with a reply that won’t feed your ego. There, another thing you and Khan share. Isn’t that lovely?”

“The Captain and I have discussed our similarities once before,” Khan says, carefully nonchalant. “I don’t think he appreciated it very much.”

Kirk's face is hidden from him, turned away towards the broken pieces of the fountain that had been blasted apart after all. “It was – interesting,” Kirk allows. “I’ll say that much.” 

“Interesting, yes,” Khan agrees. “And revealing. Have you thought any further on it?”

Kirk doesn’t speak again until the last of the sunlight dims and dies and they call an end to the day’s work. Flipping open his communicator, he requests a beam-up for all those returning to the  _Enterprise_ and Khan braces himself for the invisible force that snatches them up, depositing them on the transporter pad. 

“Get some rest,” Kirk tells McCoy as they head towards the door, looking around to encompass everyone. “I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.”

“You be sure to take your own advice, Jim."

Khan is the last to leave the room and the last to reach the turbolifts. Turbolift 1 lacks the space to carry all of them and naturally the more senior officers enter first. Khan idly watches the doors move. At the very last second, Kirk’s gaze sharply slides over, watches him back, a look too unwavering and deliberate to be mere coincidence.

Khan feels it move inside him again - that beast of a hunger, the rumble of it sending slow electricity crawling over his skin. Then the doors close, hiding Kirk’s eyes, the silent message they carry. 

In his quarters, Khan takes a sonic shower and dresses in a clean pair of trousers afterwards. He forgoes grabbing his PADD to find something to preoccupy himself with, wanting to sink into and savor the anticipation rising in him, so he sits patiently at the head of his bed. Lies in wait.

The chime rings out roughly an hour later.

Kirk enters Khan’s cabin like he had the first time: tread steady, but carrying an awareness that he's walking into dangerous territory. “I’ve just been informed that the  _Excalibur_ has arrived,” he says. “They’ll hand over your materials when they get a chance.”

“I see. We can make some progress with the Energy-Dampener at last.”

“It’s created quite the buzz for everyone who’s in the know. They’re looking forward to seeing the finished product.”

“As they rightly should. I would’ve been offended otherwise.”

“That, I can believe.”

“Is there anything else?” Khan asks silkily. “It’s just that you wouldn’t have come all the way to my quarters to tell me something you could’ve said over a communicator.”

“It’s disappointing when you act deliberately obtuse,” Kirk says, mimicking the same intonation Khan had used that day in the gymnasium. 

Khan lets a laugh slip free. “So you have made your decision.”

“A case of mutual physical gratification. Nothing more, nothing less. And we don't have to advertise it." Still, Kirk makes no other movement, some last, brittle vestige of self-control holding him back, keeping him stationary at the mouth of a path he'll never forget walking if he goes down it. He may have come here willingly, but it won’t happen as it had on Altin II—this time, Khan will have to goad Kirk into action.

“Isn’t it so much better when you leave the self-flagellation behind,” he says and pushes against Kirk’s weakening restraint with one lithe movement that takes him off the bed and onto his feet.

Kirk’s eyes linger over his bare torso with obvious want and Khan knows he has made a crack. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?”

Khan approaches at a measured pace, each step bringing him closer to a body that’s vibrating with a frenetic sort of energy even as Kirk forces it to stay beneath a thin veneer of composure. “My apologies. I’m aware you’re not here for conversation, but to be  _f_ ucked.” Sharp and hard on the fricative to make Kirk narrow his eyes and clench his fist at his side like he’s close to throwing a punch. Another crack.

“At this rate, all that’s going to happen is me punching you and walking out.”

Khan stops in front of him. He can smell the glass of liquid courage Kirk must have taken before arriving here. “That would make you a coward again and one thing you aren’t is a coward—or are you?”

“No,” Kirk says, “but I’m still going to punch you.”

His fist comes up and Khan blocks it instinctively. “The only time you’ll ever punch me is when I allow it.” It doesn’t deter Kirk from trying again, initiating a brawl that he must know is in Khan’s favor but proceeds with anyway.

Khan accepts it. This charade of a struggle is maybe what Kirk needs, a way of reasoning to himself that at least he had fought before giving in. 

It ends unsurprisingly with Kirk crashing down onto the floor, wrists pinned above his head. He attempts a kick, a pretty snarl twisting his pretty lips, but Khan is already inside the slot opened up between Kirk's thighs, his knees keeping Kirk's legs splayed wide. He doesn’t bear down onto him just yet, cupping Kirk's cheek, touching the belligerent mouth with a thumb and wanting, fiercely, to slide himself inside it, force its snarl to untangle around the thickness of his cock like a plush fruit yielding to a knife. He lowers his face down to that mouth, whispers with no little condescension, "Are you finished with your little tantrum, Captain."

Kirk bites at him hard enough that Khan almost expects the skin of his lower lip to break before Kirk lets go. "That a good enough answer?" Kirk growls, a feral creature, eyes angry, glittering with dark, wild cravings and staring into Khan's as if to look away would mean some sort of surrender, a declaration of weakness. 

A savage slither of lust courses through Khan. Every hungry cell in his body grows hungrier still.  

"More than you know," he says and captures Kirk’s mouth. Kirk pushes back, the tangle of their lips instantly too rough, violent, tasting faintly of copper until the metallic tang is wiped clean by the relentless sweep of their tongues.

Khan finally closes the gap between their bodies, his hard cock slamming against Kirk's, a sizzling bolt slamming back. Twin groans escape them, smothered quickly within the confines of another bite masquerading as a kiss. They slide against each other gracelessly, a catching and sparking of fire in Khan's blood, Kirk’s shirt rasping softly against his chest, the fabric of their trousers caught between their grinding cocks a rougher counterpoint.

Khan sets Kirk's struggling wrists free to haul the shirt off before descending on him again, back to the sumptuous mouth, the dampness glistening at Kirk’s throat. He scrapes his teeth lightly over the jump of Kirk's pulse, sucks along his collarbones. Breathlessly, Kirk says, “No marks where anyone can see,” as he twists a leg around Khan's hips, thrusting upwards harder, each snap sweetly vicious and both enough and not enough.

"Pity. The last one quite suited you,” Khan says, sliding his palm down Kirk’s coiled leg to cup the plump curve of Kirk's ass, squeezing the firm softness and relishing Kirk’s little moan, how he rubs that much faster against Khan. His ass fits against Khan’s palm like he is meant to cradle it, stroke it. Open it up and bury himself inside. He’s peeling off Kirk’s trousers before he knows it, yanking off the boots when they get in the way, stripping Kirk down to hot, naked, shimmering skin.

Kirk's uniform makes no secret of the fact that he is strongly built, muscles thick and sturdy and at their most powerful now that they have to carry him through one battle after another. Khan sees all that cultivated strength for himself, hiding nothing of his slow, frank appraisal of Kirk’s toned physique, lingering unashamedly over the heavy, substantial cock leaking onto Kirk’s flat belly. When he flicks his eyes back up to Kirk’s face, he finds no embarrassment. Kirk's self-assured mouth entertains a smirk, the arch of his eyebrow similarly arrogant:  _can’t help liking what you see, can you?_

Khan privately admits that no, he can’t. He looks at Kirk's wrists. His ribs, his clavicle, his throat. His hips, thighs, and cock. He glides his fingers over it all, puts his tongue and teeth to them, and Kirk unravels like a puzzle being dismantled, gasping, shuddering. Almost helplessly his legs fall open, then, more deliberately, pull up to his chest, revealing the entrance to his body, puckered and _shiny_. Already prepared.

Khan’s cock jolts in his trousers. “Captain, you shouldn’t have,” he says, pressing a hand against himself to quell the deep ache pulsing in between his legs and then shoving down his trousers altogether to lift the frustrating restriction.

“No, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to see that look on your face,” Kirk says huskily, half-lidded and pink-cheeked, but he’s also staring hungrily over Khan’s body like he can’t help liking what he sees, either. Sprawled there on the floor, his slick body inviting and open, glowing pink and gold, he is the picture of infinite eroticism. Khan has to have him  _now_. Has to pare him down to just his impulses — the arch of his back and the spread of his legs. The desperate need for more, that uninhibited, ferocious look on his face. He lines himself up, cock appearing large and impossible against the vulnerability of Kirk’s hole, but the ring of muscle gives way greedily and Khan slides into an incredible, grasping heat he never wants to leave.

Kirk takes it beautifully. A sharp gasp and his spine arcing up off the floor, legs cinching like a noose around Khan's waist. The smell of his satisfaction flows abundantly from him and into the heat-heavy air, grows thicker at Khan’s push. It’s rough enough to scrape Kirk’s back across the carpet and Kirk hisses, hands blindly rising up to steady themselves against the side of the bed, using the grip to push back into every thrust until their bodies are colliding blindly, brutally, like they’re both aiming to fuck each other raw.

"You're never going to forget this, James,” Khan promises heatedly. “After this, every time you see me, you'll remember these moments here where I pushed my cock inside you and I  _had_  you and you did more than let me—you wanted it more than anything."

Kirk tightens himself around Khan's cock as if to punish Khan for his words, his daring, and Khan has to force back the raw sound scraping up the inside of his throat. “Yeah, we'll just see about that. And I thought I told you not to say my name."

“So you did,  _Captain_ ,” Khan purrs, low, filthy.

“Shit, you bastard, that’s even – just – stop talking.”

Khan laughs. Kirk's body writhes below his hands, new and as full of riches as unexplored land, all his for the taking, and Khan thinks: I was born to conquer. He drops a hand next to Kirk’s head, leans forward to bend Kirk in half. Says, “Sing for me, Captain,” and slams deeper, so much deeper, and merciless into the hungry, burning, clenching core of him.

A shocked, broken moan explodes out of Kirk’s mouth. “ _Oh_. Oh, fu-fuck, that’s, yeah, yeah—” His hands lose their grip on the bed and he’s pushed across the carpet again before Khan relocates a hand to fit beneath Kirk’s shoulder and keep him in place. Kirk retaliates in the only way he can, pulling Khan down for a harsh, unstable kiss and working his hips each time Khan drags himself out to make the exit that much more maddening. “Can’t get enough of me, huh?” he whispers in a shredded voice. “Now who’s the one who wants it more than anything? Are you the one having me, Khan, or am I the one having you?”

Steel in him even now, challenge and rebellion, far more enchanting than any submission.

Khan groans out another laugh, so utterly pleased. “We’re going to have so much fun, you and I,” he says and reaches in between them, pulling roughly at Kirk’s sticky cock until Kirk tenses beneath him, tightens gloriously around him. With the same hushed noise he had made last time, Kirk paints their chests with thick, long spurts, the ropes of his come smearing hot between them. Khan snaps his hips for a few more hard beats and then he’s following, pouring himself seemingly endlessly into Kirk’s sweetly shaking body.

+

When he is no longer dazed and breathless, Kirk pushes at Khan in a wordless demand.

Khan pulls out with a wet sound. He moves off to lounge comfortably on the bed and Kirk stands, slowly, with an audible wince. A curl of self-satisfied pride winds through Khan at seeing the initially unsteady footing and the marks he has scattered over Kirk’s skin, the wetness gleaming from the valley of his ass, trailing down sluggishly onto his bruised thighs. Kirk’s body reads like a map of Khan’s territories, spaces now branded by him. The taste of the sweet-salty roads between each bruise is still thick on Khan’s tongue.

Kirk wipes himself off with his undershirt and leaves it on the floor. The rest of his uniform resettles over him like armor. He smoothes out his limp and moves to the door, draped in his natural ease once again, as if Khan's marks are an illusion, his body denying their existence, defying any sort of true claiming.

He leaves without uttering a word or glancing back and the edge of Khan's mouth lifts into a smile.

Kirk will walk down the corridors with Khan’s scent all over him, rising from him like hot vapor. Each step will make him throb where he is already throbbing, that hot, swollen place where their bodies had savagely cleaved together into one shape.

Khan finds as much pleasure in knowing that as he had found in having Kirk coming apart beneath him.

+

It happens again, naturally. In empty labs and conference rooms, in Khan’s quarters and sometimes in the more secret paths and nooks of the ship. It happens against walls and desks, against doors Kirk orders locked in a throaty voice and down on the floor when they are too caught up in their own impatience.

Each encounter is fast, harsh, little more than a tempestuous slaking of lust. Khan learns countless interesting things. How Kirk isn’t afraid to claw and slap and he never says  _please_ , never begs, how he shakes a little if Khan licks at the crease of his thighs before mouthing at Kirk’s tight balls, his tighter little hole. How he can move his body like it’s made out of water, smooth rolls, dexterous twists, captivatingly sinuous on top of Khan with a smirk on his lips because he knows he’s good.

An insatiability has opened up in Kirk, a black hole that wants to pull and swallow Khan inside of itself. Khan wonders how deep the fall would be if he let it, what would be on the other side.

Standing in the cargo bay with Malik beside him and listening to Spock and Dr. Marcus verify their list of materials, Khan thinks of all these things he’s learned. He thinks,  _only a few hours ago, your captain came rutting against me like he needed it to survive_. But when he finally speaks, Khan just says, "It seems we have more supplies than we need. Are the Ktarians to be thanked for that?"

Dr. Marcus signs off on the PADD, handing it over to the officer waiting next to her. Around them, the process of emptying the cargo containers and relocating the contents to the lab begins. Only two hours remain before the  _Enterprise_ moves out. "They've been extremely generous,” she says, “considering that they didn't have to give us anything at all. We weren't expecting them to."

"It is indeed admirable," Spock says. "Their display of altruism even at a time of great difficulty is an example of what we fight to protect and sustain." He catches Khan's eye. "Sub-Commander Shillen appeared to be particularly impressed with the efforts of your crew."

"Does this trouble you, Commander?" asks Malik. 

"I did not suggest that it does."

"You didn't need to. It would hardly be surprising if you were a little concerned by a member of the Federation viewing us in a favorable light, when your own opinion is less than favorable."

"I am fully capable of acknowledging commendable deeds, wherever they come from. It would be unreasonable to deny that your actions are crucial to the victory we seek."

"It would,” Malik agrees. “I am glad you are a man of logic, not emotion."

Khan suppresses the spark of laughter in the back of his throat and places a hand on Malik's shoulder. "Perhaps it's time for us to follow our equipment and move to the lab."

"That would be prudent," Spock says, his eyes still trained on Malik, who stares back with an impenetrable blankness. "Carry on."

Khan doesn't watch Spock leave, his attention snagged by Dr. Marcus’s prolonged silence.

Noticing his interest, she asks, "Do you really believe we'd deny you credit?"

“If you did, that would be incredibly foolish even for Starfleet. You might, however, feel tempted to downplay the significance of our role, given our shared history."

"Given our shared history,” she says tightly, “the crew on this ship would still speak up for you if that ever happened. If we needed to, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty, all of us, we'd tell the truth, no matter what."

"No appetite for any more lies, Dr. Marcus?"

"None.”

Her blue eyes – the only thing she seems to share with her father – are the most serious Khan has ever seen them.

"Fortunate that some things are not inherited," he says and pretends not to notice the surprise she can't hide. Malik’s presence at his side prompts him to add, "Go ahead to the lab, Doctor. I'll be there shortly," and he waits until she is gone to glance sidelong at Malik. "Whatever convinced you to forgo one of Lieutenant Sulu's piloting lessons in order to spend time in the cargo bay must be important."

“I thought you might value some company.”

“I might value it some more once you tell me why you’re really here.”

They walk towards the exit unhurriedly, moving into the quieter hallway outside.

Quietly, Malik says, "I can't help but notice that there's something different about Kirk recently. I wouldn't say I have particularly lengthy conversations with him but it sometimes feels like he wants to end them quicker than usual. Maybe even avoid me, if he could.”

"Interesting," Khan says. 

A beat of silence. Of realization.

"You already know."

"I do. I could tell you, but it's more entertaining to let you work it out yourself."

"And when I've worked it, will I like what I find?"

"Well,” Khan says, “it might amuse you."  

+

They fuck again in Khan's quarters when their down-time overlaps and Khan enjoys the obscene sight of watching himself disappear over and over into Kirk. Muscles ripple down the length of Kirk’s back as he moves, trapped in a pendulum of looping pleasure, frantically pushing back into Khan’s shaft and forwards into his own fist. Khan leans down like a drape over Kirk’s spine. The angle of his thrusts shifts just right to make Kirk’s world go bright each time.

Over Kirk’s muttered curses, Khan speaks into the tension packed tight at Kirk’s shoulders, “If we had longer, Captain, I’d let you split yourself open on my cock until you exhausted yourself and then I’d drag it out even more, fuck you slowly while all you could do is lie there and let it happen, too sensitive to even make a sound. It would hurt and it would be bliss and when the end came, it would feel like a thousand orgasms in one.”

Kirk is spilling onto the sheets by the last word, groaning wildly, his head hanging down between his shoulders. Khan settles his face at Kirk’s neck to smell the particular musk of his release and drives on ‘til his own hits like a devastating tidal wave.

He leaves Kirk to catch his breath on the bed, taking a seat at his desk without bothering to re-dress. The screen of his PADD activates with a glow. "How long do you think you can keep this hidden from your friends? McCoy has already confronted me once and that was before Ktaris.”

Kirk lifts his head from the mattress. A noticeable pause interrupts his heavy breathing. "What did he say?"

"Only that he's concerned about you and suspects I am related to the cause."

"He's always concerned about me," Kirk mutters, not unkindly, and runs a hand through his sweat-matted hair. "What about Malik? You're not bothered about his reaction when he finds out? Or any of your crew, for that matter?"

"You haven't been subtle enough to throw him off, so you should expect him to work it out soon. Luckily for you, he couldn’t care less for these things."

"What, fucking your reluctant ally?”

"Sex," Khan says, deliberately raking his eyes over Kirk's nakedness. "And while past events may have left your friends unwilling to trust me, Malik feels nothing of the sort towards you. I doubt he feels anything at all."

Kirk ignores the look just as deliberately. "I thought I'd be glad to know that he thinks I don't warrant any concern, but I'm feeling offended instead," he says and eases himself off the bed, standing with his back to Khan. A braid of marks adorns the length of his spine, dark smudges softening the cut of his hips where Khan had also gripped him. "He's definitely not fond of Spock, though. That much he's made clear. Should I be worried?"

"Malik's only intention was to make his sentiments clear."

"So another show of loyalty to you." Kirk retrieves his trousers, snatching up his communicator from the floor and placing it on the bed.

"You could see it that way." A message from Dr. Marcus blinks up at Khan from the screen of his PADD, opening up to reveal her further thoughts on the Energy-Dampener.

Kirk makes a quiet, thoughtful noise. He moves into the bathroom, the sonic shower coming to life soon after.

"What is it?" Khan asks. 

"What?"

"Whatever you're thinking right now."

"Why do you assume I'm thinking of anything but getting myself cleaned up?"

Kirk has left the bathroom door open and it affords Khan a clear view of Kirk standing in profile, staring at a bitemark on his right forearm, absentmindedly stroking it. " _Are_  you thinking of anything but getting yourself cleaned up?" 

The sonic shower drones on softly some more before Kirk says, "You won't like the answer.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” Khan replies.

"I was just thinking of how his loyalty to you now is a complete contrast to the way he looked at you when we first woke him up." Kirk momentarily falls silent, perhaps to give Khan an opportunity to cut this line of conversation off. Khan doesn't take it. "His expression, it was – so cold. So distant. Even when you proved who you were, he looked at you like you’d been disfigured beyond belief. Like he couldn’t see you anymore. I don’t know what I would've done if, for some reason, Bones or Spock no longer recognized me."

Kirk waits again for a reply Khan still withholds. "Told you you wouldn't like it," he says, switching off the sonics. He returns to the bedroom, dressed in his trousers. 

"They recognized me in the end," Khan says. "That is all that matters."

"You thought I pitied you, didn't you? Back then, in Sickbay. I should've expected that. I would've thought the same, too."

"What was it, then, if not pity?"

Kirk picks up the rest of his uniform, but doesn't pull them on just yet, looking at Khan with solemn eyes instead. "I'd realized I shouldn't have forgotten something like that. I know a thing or two about being pitied, so I'm not the kinda guy who goes around heaping it on others."

There isn't any trace of the bitterness Khan would expect to hear in an admission like that. It's merely a neutral offer of information. An exchange. This piece of private information in return for the same from Khan.

He recalls sifting through the history of Starfleet, learning of the  _Kelvin_  incident. A father’s sacrifice, a son who stands in front of Khan now because of it. "Yes, I imagine someone with a past like yours would be familiar with pity."

"So you do know about him," Kirk says, like he is confirming a suspicion. "Makes sense since you obviously know about Nero - can't talk about the  _Narada_  without talking about the  _Kelvin_ , right? But just how much do you know about me?"

"Are you concerned I'll find out something you don't want me to? There's no need. I have neither the time nor the inclination. Any secrets you have still remain secret."

"Good to know.”

"But," Khan says, setting his PADD aside and standing, "this secret here, between us, can only be hidden for so long." Kirk does nothing to prevent him from getting close and experimentally, Khan spreads his hand over Kirk's throat, resting his thumb against the carotid. One unyielding squeeze and the trachea would be beyond repair and Kirk dead.  _People should either be caressed or crushed_. Khan has done both where he saw fit. He presses down very slightly. Kirk's heartbeat picks up pace, but he is silent as he watches Khan, silent and unblinking. Fearless. "Not worried at all, Captain?"

"What's there to be worried about? You can't afford to hurt me, let alone kill me."

"That’s true. And yet—" Khan sees the black cores of those eyes expand over the blue, "—I don’t think it's only courage that keeps you standing here. You do enjoy being roughly handled after all, much to my pleasure."  

With his free hand, he flicks open Kirk's trousers, pushes it back down his legs. Kirk’s ass tempts his fingers inwards to the small pucker he had spread with his cock, filled with his come barely half an hour ago. He dips the tip of his finger inside, and Kirk reacts like he’s been hit with a phaser bolt, sharp, fast, dropping his clothes onto the floor and encircling Khan’s own throat with a tight hand, nails digging in.

Khan’s cock stirs. "Very brave, Captain.”

“It would be if I was scared of you, but I’m not.”

“As I said: brave.” A quick glance downwards tells him Kirk’s cock is also filling out against his thigh. “I think you deserve a reward." Unceremoniously, he shoves Kirk onto the bed, following him down and slotting their hips together. They fall into a messy rut, hardening against each other, not wet enough to be entirely comfortable but good enough to keep chasing after the friction. Khan is reaching over to the bedside drawer that now, courtesy of Kirk, houses lubricant, when Kirk’s communicator goes off. He grabs it first, smiling at the name he sees. "What a coincidence. It’s Dr. McCoy.”

Kirk snatches the communicator away. He takes in several breaths. "What's up, Bones?"

Khan reaches for lubricant again, pouring it over their cocks while his mouth drags heat across Kirk’s jaw and up to his ear. Tugging at the lobe with his teeth, he squeezes a hand around their slick shafts in slow beats and whispers very quietly, “What would he say if he saw you right now, naked and hard beneath me?"

Kirk closes his eyes. Rocks his hips up. “Yeah, 'course we're still on for that drink. No,  _ah_ , I don't – I don't—”

“Or maybe that arouses you,” Khan muses. “The clandestine nature of it all, being the only one to know I’ve had my hands and mouth all over you.” There’s a bead at Kirk’s slit; Khan swipes his thumb at it, licking it off. “Still getting wet for me even while you’re talking to your friend.”

“—uh,” Kirk stammers, “I don’t think he’s available. Got plans with – Ro-maine already, shit—” Kirk hisses at the teeth Khan sets around his nipple, sinking his hand into Khan’s hair, pulling but not pulling him  _away_. “What? No, I’m. Fine. I’m fine.” Khan teases the nub, letting it pebble in his mouth, and traces the flush across Kirk’s chest with his tongue until he reaches the other sweet bud, sucks it into a peak just as leisurely as he’s still pumping their cocks. Above him, Kirk finishes in a rush, “It’s, noth—listen, see you later? Yeah, cafeteria, and then, yeah, bye,” and drops the communicator with a growl, dragging Khan up to smash their mouths together. “Fuck, you asshole, you _annoying—_ ” He shoves, trying to force Khan off of him, and Khan allows it, Kirk climbing on top to bite viciously everywhere he can, everywhere Khan’s skin is soft. He grinds down, cock against cock, drags of fire, eyes simmering with an indignant glare.

“Is that why you’re still in bed with me, James?”

“ _Fucking infuriating_.”

"Let me show you just how infuriating I can be," Khan says and flips them over again, diving down to get at Kirk’s snarling mouth, hands sweeping avariciously over his body and all its hidden, intimate places.

+

Only three days into their journey to Mir’aask, the _Enterprise_ descends into red alert. Uhura's voice repeats, “All hands to battle stations,” and from the tempo of the vibrations beneath his feet, Khan can tell the ship is soaring at maximum warp.

"Distress signals from the  _Pegasus_  and  _Electra_ ," Scott explains the moment Khan finds him in Main Engineering. "And distress signals these days only mean one thing."

"A Klingon welcoming committee," Priyanka says offhandedly, her gaze still on the computer station in front of her. "They simply couldn't wait until we reached Mir'aask to say hello."

“That’s one way of looking at an ambush," Scott says and moves quickly to the intercom transmitting Kirk’s voice.

_"Bridge to Engineering, tell me those upgraded torpedoes are getting loaded."_

"Dr. Marcus is taking care of it as we speak, sir."

_"We're going to need them very soon."_

"Yes, Captain. They’ll be at your fingertips in a jiffy." A shout of his name pulls Scott away from the intercom, but before he goes, he fixes Khan with a strange look, his face seized by some kind of tension. "Keep an eye on the warp core readings,” he says rigidly and dashes away.

"A pity we can't fire through the cloak," Priyanka says, joining Khan as he climbs the stairs to the platform above.  "But at least neither can the Klingons."

"We can potentially compensate for the cloak's limitations by improving the shields. Work with Scott, see what you and Arjun—" footsteps behind them as if the mere sound of his name is enough to summon Arjun, "—come up with, when you have some spare time."

"Consider it done."

"They all look like small ants scurrying about," Arjun says, as he considers the flurry of activity below them. "So easy to crush."

"Try to resist," Khan replies. "We can’t do the enemy’s job for them.”

At the first hit to the ship, the walkways shake from the impact. Priyanka smoothly steadies one officer who trips, waving off the hurried thanks she receives, and Arjun jumps over the railing to assist another.

For a time, it's just hissing smoke and sparking machinery. Flashing lights and addressing blinking alerts to malfunctions. It’s as he’s checking the warp core readings that Khan abruptly notices it – the clear glass door. The entrance to the warp core. The _death-site_ , where Kirk’s irradiated body had paid the price for his sacrifice, just meters away from his beloved ship's heart as it throbbed with new life and a pulse as vibrant blue as his eyes. Each breath would have been a wind of agony in Kirk’s lungs, each blink heavy and sluggish until they stopped entirely.

Khan stops. The origins of the thought, why it had come, he doesn't know. Carefully, he cuts its anomalous presence out of his mind.

Kirk is speaking through the intercom again, inquiring after damages and probabilities.

"We can still beam over as many of them as we can," someone says hurriedly.

It’s the panic he hears that helps Khan decipher what it means.

"The  _Pegasus_  or the  _Electra_? Or both?" Priyanka says, leaning closer to him. 

"We'll find out very soon."

The  _Enterprise_ ’s shields hold and the sporadic attacks begin tapering off, the minutes between each one steadily growing until nothing more comes and the ship regains her tranquility as if she had never been unsettled at all.  

Engineering falls similarly silent, but without sharing in her peace. Khan sees the anxious glances thrown around, the spaces between each officer packed tight with strained emotions.

They wait until Kirk speaks to them at last, flat and grim. "Attention all aboard the  _Enterprise_ : the Klingon ambush has been neutralized, but I regret to inform you that, while we have rescued as many officers as we can, we have lost the remaining crewmembers of the  _USS Pegasus_  along with their ship."

+

The hours following the attack are marked with a certain lifelessness that taints the rooms, loiters in the corridors. The sounds of the ship reach Khan’s ears strangely subdued, like fragmented transmissions from a far-flung world. He leaves Engineering behind, ostensibly for an hour or two of rest, but his feet take him towards Observation Deck 3.

The first step inside tells him he is not alone in wanting to looking out at the stars.

A flood of shadows roll in black waves where the light pouring in through the viewport cannot reach and dispel them and standing in front of that glass that is the only thing separating him from cold infinity is Kirk’s slumped figure.  

Khan goes to stand beside him. McCoy's words from the last time Khan had been here return to him, their mystery solved.

Kirk gives no indication that he's aware of a second presence, though he must be. His eyes are closed, lashes soft against his cheeks, hand on the glass in front of him as if he is measuring his ship’s heartbeat and hum, listening to her serene rhythms and divining from them secret words only he can hear.

Barefoot and dressed in his sleep clothes, Kirk appears oddly exposed in a way he doesn't even when he is naked. The light washes out any color in his face, renders him unusually wan. He is too still and too quiet. The vibrancy Khan is used to seeing, the lively, suffusing energy that characterizes Kirk, dancing in his eyes, lighting up his smiles, is dimmed into weak embers of itself. Khan admittedly finds it a bizarre sight, like he has witnessed a luminescent portrait turn monochrome.

"You have trouble sleeping," he guesses.

"It's harder these days," Kirk replies, gruff with exhaustion. "Too busy wondering if we’ll get attacked the moment I put my head to the pillow. Or, like today, if another ship will. If we'll make it through the next attack when it comes.” His eyes open, two bright slits. “It's not like my dreams are all that great to begin with."

Nightmares. Khan can almost see their dark, lumbering shapes still sunk into Kirk's haunted gaze.

Dreams are merely the result of electrochemical activity in the brain. To fear them is irrational; they have no more power over you than what you grant them. But Khan is also aware that it’s almost second nature to give them this power anyway and allow their teeth and claws to follow you into your waking hours.

Since the School, he doesn’t dream anymore. If he does, they flee from him as soon as he wakes, the flimsy, fuzzy silt of them running through his fingers, and he is glad for it. 

"I've lost too many people because of this war," Kirk continues, "and I should be grateful that it's not more. I  _am_ , but—" He shrugs, his shoulder briefly brushing against Khan's.

"You blame yourself.”

"I know it's not my fault. I'm doing everything I possibly can. You know how that goes, though."

While it irks him to be reminded of it, Khan does know. "It's what you have to do."

"It is, and I'll do it for as long as I have to, whatever it takes."

"Even if it means dying again?"

"Whatever it takes," Kirk says again with the conviction of a man who has already been tested.  

That stray, intrusive thought that had struck Khan in Engineering strikes him again suddenly, followed by a question that trips out of him on its own. "What did it feel like to die, Captain?" 

Kirk hadn’t been moving, but he is noticeably still now. He stays silent for so long, Khan doesn’t expect to receive an answer. But then, Kirk says, "It burned.” Hoarse like he is burning still. “It burned like nothing I'd ever experienced before and I felt sick to my stomach and dizzy and I was—" He stops. "I guess someone like you would believe that the fear of death is a lowly disease afflicting the inferior and the cowardly."

"On the contrary. It's a perfectly natural fear. Instinctive." 

"So you've also—"

"No,” Khan interrupts. “The fear may be perfectly natural, but I am not."

"How could I forget? You were made  _better_."

Khan turns his head, catches the bitterness on Kirk's face before it can disappear. He is coming to learn the nuances in Kirk's expressions, to distinguish this bitterness from every other instance of bitterness he has seen from Kirk. “Why do you look at me that way sometimes? This isn't the first time I've seen you do it."

"Like what?"

Like I remind you of things you’d rather forget, he thinks to say, but that isn’t right, it’s too imprecise, and Khan must often remind Kirk of things he’d rather forget.

Somehow, Kirk understands. “I once knew a man who had his own theory of what ‘better’ meant and surprise, surprise, it wasn’t anything good." He doesn’t allow Khan a chance to ask more and returns with little grace to their previous subject. "I think you do know something about the fear of death, actually. It’s just not  _your_  death that would concern you.”

Unwanted memories shiver awake in the back of Khan's mind: corpses on the ground, the blood of his family poisoned. He could smell it even, that poison, sickly sweet like cloying perfume. Then, fast forward to the  _Vengeance_  crashing in San Francisco, his life potentially moments away from coming to a brutal end, but how little that mattered when his people were already gone.

Khan blinks and banishes the recollections. 

"You were all too glad to die if you could avenge them," Kirk is saying. " _Love, in fire and blood_." It sounds like a quote, but nothing that Khan recognizes. Kirk notices, smiles slightly. "Don't tell me I've managed to find something you don’t know." But his mouth is quick to recede back into a dismal shape. "Doubt Neruda was thinking of you when he wrote the poem, anyway."

"It fits," Khan says, because it's true. The words resonate, clear and sonorous, a mathematically perfect melody.  _Love, in fire and blood_. What he would do and has already done to protect his people, the awful, devastating things. Fire and blood.

“Fits a little too well.”

“But that’s exactly what you’re counting on. Now you know I will protect you in the same way.” Kirk doesn’t acknowledge it and Khan doesn’t press him to. “Win, Captain. Make it so that all those deaths have not been in vain. That is all you can do now.”

"I intend to," Kirk replies, quiet but firm.

If they were different men who shared a different history, this would be a moment of solidarity between them. It might, Khan realizes, be so anyway.

+

On a whim, he investigates the phrase Kirk had quoted and it leads him to a poem. There's nothing of particular merit in any of the lines until he hits the final stanza.

_In this part of the story I am the one who dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you. Because I love you. Love, in fire and blood._

Khan stares at the words for some time. Yes, he thinks. Yes.

+

There's little warning when it happens, only a low hiss, and even less time to utter a warning. He's by McCoy in a matter of seconds, pushing him out of the way just as the flames burst forth, hot lashes swiping at him before he moves beyond their angry reach.

"My God," McCoy says, giving into his shock for the fleeting moment it takes from him to exchange bewilderment for professionalism. "Sickbay right now," he orders. The tricorder he frequently keeps with him is quick to appear, taking its readings with a whirr. 

Even without medical attention, the violent prickles and stings spreading from Khan’s chest to the right side of his jaw will heal by themselves and the urge to push McCoy away is strong, but he knows protocol will forbid him from continuing his work just as much as McCoy's obstinacy will. Resigned, Khan says, "I don’t particularly need you, but I'll let you feel useful nonetheless."

"That’s right, you're helping  _me_  out, not the other way around. Fine, we'll go with that if it'll get you moving faster."

"And I'll figure out what the bloody hell's gone wrong," Scott says, frowning deeply at Khan's wounds.

"I'm sure I'll be seeing you later for your shots," McCoy says, throwing Scott a firm look over his shoulder as he and Khan walk away. "Don't think I've forgotten what I came down here for in the first place. The flu doesn't care about Klingons or wars."

Khan ignores the startled glances he receives on the way to Sickbay and soon, they're stepping into the brightly-lit space that is McCoy's dominion on the  _Enterprise_. Half of the bio-beds are in use, medics in white uniforms floating from one patient to another like benevolent wraiths. In command gold, Kirk is a beacon that stands out.

“Jim likes to come down here now and then and give the patients a pep-talk,” McCoy explains, the sound of his voice drawing Kirk’s attention.  

Kirk apologetically cuts short his conversation with an Andorian ensign and strides over, demanding, "What the hell happened?"

"Minor accident in Engineering," Khan replies. McCoy shows him to a bio-bed, Kirk following them over. Nurse Uxtrii swiftly appears with a cool compress that enlarges and molds its soothing body to Khan's blistered skin.

"Thank you, Uxtrii. I'll take care of this one myself," McCoy says, then turns back to Kirk. "Yeah, a  _minor_  accident that would've burned me if Khan hadn't pushed me outta the way. Scotty's investigating what caused it as we speak."

Kirk parks himself out of the way but nearby, apparently having no intention of leaving Sickbay just yet. "I had something to share with Khan," he says, "and was thinking of swinging by Engineering and the lab myself. Still will, just to check on things."

"Then I hope you don't mind an audience, Khan. Not like it's anything Jim hasn't seen before." 

"No, I don't believe it is," Khan says, putting on an innocent tone. Kirk seems tempted to roll his eyes. 

"Once the compress is done, I can cut away your shirt. How bad’s the pain?"

"Bearable."

“‘Bearable’ has a completely different meaning when it’s coming from you. Just how high is your tolerance?"

"High." Purely to see McCoy scowl, Khan adds, "I measured it myself."

McCoy doesn't disappoint, face twisting into a grimace. From a tray of tools, he selects a pair of nano-gloves. "Why not do the mad scientists' jobs for them, right?"

"Right."

Once McCoy judges it's been long enough, he removes the compress and leans in to carefully cut at Khan's shirt with the same steady hand that occasionally handles a phaser expertly in the midst of battle. Whatever he might claim not to be, McCoy is clearly a decent marksman.

The fabric falls away from Khan's torso, landing in messy shapes in his lap until he's bare-chested. McCoy sweeps it all aside and says, "Lie down," as he reaches a hand out to the side of the bio-bed, pulling forward what looks like a simple glass screen. It curls over Khan, a wave of colorful readings streaming across it once in place. 

"It's just a big dermal regen, since your burns cover a larger surface area," Kirk says. "Been under it a few times myself, even considered giving it a more personal name at one point."

"You are never calling any medical equipment in my Sickbay 'Stella'," McCoy says, fingers dancing over the screen, presumably configuring its settings. He makes a small sound of interest. "Your body is already cutting down on the amount of time you’ll need to stay under the regen. At this rate, it’ll take only thirty minutes, maybe even less.”

It takes nineteen. The screen flashes green and McCoy examines the results with clear satisfaction.

“All good as new. The skin might still be a little tender and if you were anyone else, I'd order you to take whatever's left of your shift off, but you're you and you probably believe rest is for lesser mortals."

"I'll be fine," Khan says, sitting up when the screen is tucked back into its subtle compartment. Kirk hands him a spare black shirt that he had procured from somewhere and Khan pulls it over his head, the fabric feeling slightly odd against his newly-healed skin.

“Listen,” McCoy says, clearing his throat awkwardly. “I want to say thank you for what you did back there. I'm not happy about you getting injured on my behalf, but you did protect me and I can't have it both ways, so thank you."

"It was nothing, Doctor. If that's all, I'll be returning to my work now."

"Nothing to you, maybe, but not to me. Just accept my thanks, will you? And remind Scotty about his shots. Even Jim here took them without complaint."

"Wait 'til this whole thing is over," Kirk says, "and then we'll see if I remain that way."

They leave Sickbay to the sound of McCoy's scoff and trudge down the meandering corridor towards the turbolift.

"You had something to say to me?" Khan reminds him.

"Just that there was an incident at Ktaris. One of the Klingon prisoners managed to escape and send a transmission before he was found. We still don’t know what the message said, but we can take an educated guess."

"A warning of some kind to his comrades."

"Yeah."

"It doesn't matter. They can exchange as many warnings as they like, but it won't help."

"No chance of stopping sharks if they smell blood in the water, right?"

"Are the sharks meant to be solely my crew or yours too? Either way, a step up from being monsters. I should mark that progress in a log of my own.”

Turbolift 4 arrives, Kirk cordially greeting everyone who steps out. The ‘lift closes with only the two of them inside. They stand in silence until Kirk says, “I appreciate you protecting Bones."

Khan looks at him out of the corner of his eyes. "I’ve receiving so much gratitude these days, I hardly know what to do with it.”

"You know why I'm saying it," Kirk mutters and he isn't wrong.

Their alliance, however unwilling it may be, leaves them with the obligation to protect each other's crew, but McCoy is different, inhabiting a unique category of importance. So frequently by Kirk’s side, he is to Kirk what Malik is to Khan.

"It would be rather foolish from a strategic point of view to allow the ship's Chief Medical Officer to be harmed when I could prevent it."

"Oh, don't worry, I know you didn't do it out of the kindness of your heart, so your big, bad rep's still intact. Even so, you could've just let Bones get hurt if you wanted."

"True."

"And I’m glad you didn’t."

Kirk is staring straight at the doors as he says this, but his voice – Khan sifts through it and finds nothing but sincerity in it. "Very well,” he says. “You’re welcome."

“Great. Now tell me how you’re getting on with the Energy-Dampener.”

+

The last tactical meeting before the  _Enterprise_  arrives at Mir'aask is merely a run-through of the plan they've pieced together. Khan speaks up just enough to move the conversation along and is among the first to leave once Kirk dismisses them.

Outside the conference room, Malik is leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, the fingers of one hand tapping against his biceps like a tiger absentmindedly flexing its claws. "The plan is going ahead as it is?"

"It is," Khan says. "Let the others know."

"I will. They'll be pleased."

"Why doesn't that surprise me," McCoy says, stopping beside them. "You think maybe you oughta find a hobby that doesn't involve clobbering people?"

Malik spares a moment to acknowledge Sulu walking past before replying, "Why would we when our hobby is proving to be very beneficial these days.”

"You know what? Never mind. Just stay on our side."

"Treat us well and we will," Khan says. 

He hears Kirk ending a brief exchange with Spock behind them and then Kirk breaks into their conversation, clasping McCoy’s shoulder, giving him a crooked smile. "Did I hear something about clobbering people? Should I be prepared for anything?"

"Just another lovely conversation with our friendly neighborhood killing machines, Jim. They have the uncanny ability of almost making me want to talk to Spock instead.”

"Now that  _is_  uncanny. Maybe Spock is the one who needs to be prepared." 

“He should be so lucky to have me go outta my way to talk to him,” McCoy mutters, waving his hand in a flippant gesture, and takes off.

Kirk watches him go fondly. "Next time I see you two, it'll be in the transporter room just before we beam down onto Mir'aask."

"I’m looking forward to it,” Malik says.

"Of course you are. You guys are the only group of people on this ship whose morale isn’t in any danger of going down.” Kirk presses his lips together, possibly to hide a smile.

“I also hope to see if the combat lessons I held for your crew will come through on the battlefield.”

“I was considering going to one of those myself, actually.”

“You should. Malik is a good teacher,” Khan says, smoothly adding, “I would not be averse to another sparring session with you myself. You could consider it a private lesson.”

Kirk arches an eyebrow. “I see no reason why I shouldn’t go to the same ones as my crew. You know what? Put my name down for the next one, Malik. I think I’ll learn one or two useful things for the future.” With that, he excuses himself, disappearing around the corner.

Malik says, “If I read that glint in his eye correctly, he intends to carry out those one or two useful things on you.”

“I do have a gift for bringing that out in him.”

“I have a feeling that that’s not the only thing you bring out in him.”

Khan smiles and motions for Malik to follow him. At this time, he is scheduled to be alone in the lab and they’ll be free to continue their conversation in more private surroundings.

Malik spends the first few minutes assessing the progress. It’s not a false show of interest in Khan’s work, but he is also waiting. Even with all the liberties their friendship allows him, Malik’s own rules of propriety and respect for Khan keep him reserved on certain subjects unless Khan explicitly invites his opinion.

“I’m disappointed it took you this long. You’re slipping.”

“It turns out that my timetable isn’t conducive to spying on the captain of this ship.”

“What gave it away?”

“His behavior towards me tends to be influenced by his interactions with you. Anger, resentment, fear, these things wouldn't necessarily draw him away from me, merely from you. But physical attraction, especially attraction that has already been acted upon, that would be awkward enough to warrant some avoidance. Besides, you would not have dropped that innuendo and he would not have responded to it unless there was something already acknowledged there.”

“Well-deduced.”

"I’m merely curious as to what your intentions are now that you've decided to indulge this new factor, shall we say, in your interactions with him.”

"My  _intentions_? Are you concerned for his virtue?"

“If there ever was a time to be concerned for Kirk's virtue, I think we can all agree it is long past."

"It's purely physical," he says, thinking of taut muscles and low sounds and the taste of Kirk's skin. The muscles of his belly tighten at the potent memories.  

"I see," Malik says in the bored tone of a man whose body remains eternally indifferent in the face of all temptation. "I've heard Kirk has something of a reputation – or at least he did, before the war. He, like you, isn’t prone to wanting anything beyond the physical, but in continuing these encounters, he risks making himself vulnerable to you. I appear to have underestimated just how curious he is about you."

"I think he underestimated that himself."

"His friends won’t be glad when they find out."

"No," Khan says, "but that is his predicament to resolve, not mine." He runs through Malik’s words again, detecting a cloaked implication. “If he’s risking making himself vulnerable to me, then it goes to follow that I am risking the same. Is that what you believe? Do you think this may somehow impair my judgment?”

Malik demurs. ”That would mean doubting your dedication to our people. That would mean stupidity.”

"I chose well for my second-in-command," Khan says, not entirely facetious, and Malik accepts the compliment with a slow smirk.

“It's not the same for you as it is for him. You pose a greater danger to him and his principles than he does to you. He can't know with certainty that you won't somehow exploit this." Malik pauses. "Will you?"

"I’m only interested in letting this run its course and seeing how far it goes. Kirk has his curiosity and you could say I have mine."

“Speaking of curiosity—“ Malik turns his head towards the Energy-Dampener, “—I noticed something in your notes on the weapon and have been meaning to ask you about it.”

“Go on,” Khan says and waits for Malik’s dark gaze to return to him. He already has an inkling as to what the question will be.

+

Mir'aask is a desert planet. Its air is weighed down with heat bleeding from the twin suns, Iranth and Cloranth. White stone paths interrupt white sands, circulating around and towards white buildings. Save for its purple-skinned population, it’s a world bleached nearly colorless. Spock falls back against a half-demolished wall, a stream of green running his arm, and Khan wonders if even an infinitesimal part of Spock is reminded of Vulcan-that-was.

"My injuries are not of a highly severe nature. I can endure.”

"If not, Commander," says Rahul, ripping off one of his sleeves and tearing it further into strips for Spock's wounds, "it's a good day to die, according to our Klingon friends."

"Our Klingon friends deem every day a good day to die so long as the death is honorable. If you were intending to reassure me, you did not succeed."

"That’s fine. I prefer my patients to remain in perpetual fear for their lives - it keeps them alert."

Khan raises his phaser rifle, unleashing another round of fire before ducking back down again. “It’s only our first assault, Mr. Spock. It’d be a shame if you had to bow out so early.”

“A shame," Spock repeats blandly. "Yes. That is precisely the word I would use.” 

A burst of sound and sand ahead of them, fire reaching seemingly high enough to graze the sky, and Rahul says, "I always did enjoy a good fireworks display. Shakti tends to put on the best."

Khan silently agrees, catching a glimpse of her. Unrestrained, Shakti could level every structure in sight with one coordinated wave of detonations, turning the sand beneath their feet into glass. Only glitter and ruin and her own dark satisfaction would remain once she was done.

A flash of silver chases her out of sight and Khan runs his eyes over the rest of the scene. As always, he anticipates nothing but triumph for them today but the more the minutes go by, the more he senses something is amiss — has been amiss since he'd first beamed down onto Mir'aask. There's a peculiar clawing at the back of his mind, an indistinct thought scrambling to free itself, its edges too ill-defined for him to hold onto.

"You feel it too, don't you," Rahul says, shuffling over. "Something’s different this time.  _They’re_  different."

"Please elaborate," Spock says. “What strikes you as different?”

"I doubt Vulcans place any value on intuition,” Khan says.

"Intuition is not frequently supported by clear reasoning. However, I am familiar with a Captain who has achieved much success through employing his intuition well."

"So Vulcans generally do not, but you do.”

"That would be correct.”

“Well, my intuition, Mr. Spock,” Rahul says, “is telling me the Klingons have another plan in mind than just killing everyone in sight. We’ve been down here long enough that we should’ve seen more casualties than we have so far.”

A small silence as Spock visibly searches through his memory of the day before saying, “There is indeed a decline in the number of casualties. It could be that our forces have simply become more efficient.”

“Let’s hope that that is the case,” Khan says. Another quick look over the wall informs him that they’re in need of relocating if they’d like to remain alive and he readies himself to move. “We’ve got incoming, gentlemen. Too many to remain sitting here. We run on my mark.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Rahul murmurs. Spock, unsurprisingly, does not echo him, but he nimbly sprints out with them when Khan determines the right moment to move.

At most, they only have forty five minutes of daylight left before cold night swoops in and darkness provides their enemy with too many hiding places. In those forty five minutes, it’s difficult to miss the increased frequency with which Khan is targeted. He twists to avoid enemy fire, discharges his weapons without pause, and in the seconds in between, he traces the movement of the Klingon squads, how they frequently join together to form larger, black clusters and flit off in the same directions, towards specific locations, like lethal swarms of birds honing in.

They come at him, at Rahul, yelling invectives, but Spock slips through their grasp, firing back at them from a safer distance. Barely any of the Klingons take notice.

“They’re letting him go on purpose,” Rahul says just as Khan thinks it. That clawing in his mind has grown more fervent, only now he is beginning to realize what it is scrabbling to tell him. “Do you think—”

“Yes,” Khan replies swiftly. “It’s us. They’re after us. That little bird at Ktaris told them to hunt us down first.”

“In that case, we need to split apart, force them to do the same.”

There’s no time to say anything more than that. They separate and run. Khan refers to the map he had memorized days before and takes zig-zagging paths, changing direction at whim until his group of pursuers fragments once again and he picks them off with greater ease.

Following another explosion, a flurry of sand rains down roughly five meters to his left. Khan turns his head to assess the new threat, pulling his rifle up instinctively.

He sees at once that the new threat isn’t intended for him.

Kneeling over two Mir’aaskians, Malik’s hands are twisted up to catch the collapsed wall threatening to crush them. Deep burns creep across his arms in bloody, blistered vines, winding an unsightly path all the way to his spine. The Mir'aaskians protected by his body scurry away; Khan doesn't watch to see where they go and neither do the three Klingon soldiers closing in on Malik. They simply aim their weapons. Open fire.

Malik doesn't crumble – won't let himself crumble – but it doesn't matter. Khan  _moves_. He's there quicksilver fast, firing his rifle, snapping bones, stealing a bat'leth to impale its blade into several organs and twist until pulses cuts off. 

Stone shatters, smashes, as Malik throws off the wall. He lunges forward, slamming the last Klingon soldier down into the sand, setting the trap of his fingers around the throat. Khan retrieves Malik's gatling gun and hands it over. Malik places its mouth against the Klingon's head, fires without stopping until the body trapped in his grip falls still.

"A good attempt," he says roughly when Khan drops to a knee beside him, "but I am not so easy to kill."

Disruptor fire has left Malik's torso as savaged and scalded as his arms and back, red dripping everywhere, red,  _red veins across their faces, corpses on the ground, his people poisoned, dying and dead—_

 _No_ , Khan thinks through an anger that makes his skin feel too tight and his body too small to contain it. Not again. "This is not how you die," he says, an order.

Malik’s smile is wet with crimson. “Yes, my liege.”

“Haven’t I told you to stop calling me that?”

“Of course, my liege.”

Lakshmi appears, materializing like a phantom. McCoy, too.

"We need to get him to camp," McCoy says. "There's no way we can treat these injuries out here."

"I'll take care of it," Lakshmi replies, distant with concentration. The left side of her face is littered with scrapes, small glints where sand sits in the raw marks like she’d been dragged across the ground. 

Her communicator sparks with Vidya’s voice: “I have eyes on you, Lakshmi. Move Malik; I’ll provide cover.”

"And I’ll wipe out what is left of our enemies," Khan says, grabbing Malik's gatling gun, turning his back on McCoy's suddenly apprehensive eyes.

He casts his gaze around like a net and finds his next target, then the next and the next. He fights like a demon, chaos his element. The flow of Klingon blood should wash him clean of fury, their red dousing out the black roiling in his gut, but it doesn’t, just streaks down his shirt, hides in the fabric. It doesn’t weigh him down, nothing does, and for a while, Khan’s darkened, narrowed world is brightened only by the light of phaser fire and disruptor blasts.

“Khan _._ ”

Like a summons, Kirk’s voice cuts through the haze and yanks at him. Khan crashes back into reality with all the suddenness of breaking through the surface of water and returning to clear air after a lifetime spent in the depths.

Kirk is behind him, standing by his shoulder. “It’s over, Khan,” he says grimly, as if he had somehow forgotten just who Khan is, what he is capable of, even though he is also the one who had said to Khan,  _Love, in fire and blood._

Khan drops his weapons. He doesn’t look at the mess he’s made and walks past Kirk and all the other wary eyes watching him.

Vidya meets him halfway. A small gash is healing on her forehead, two larger ones across her clavicle. She tells him what he wants to know without prompting, listing who is as injured as Malik, who has less severe wounds that will still need tending to.

“They’re all in the camp. Lakshmi said she’ll let you know when they’re stable. The rest of us have superficial wounds, but even the number of those is greater than usual.”

He notices her looking down at his side, noting his own superficial wounds. Khan barely feels the pain of them, conscious of their existence only from the way they sometimes pull on his skin.

"That wasn’t sheer luck on their part,” he says. “They were targeting us deliberately.”

“It seems that way.” She glances at something over his shoulder, pursing her small mouth thoughtfully. “You unnerved them, I think, and I do not mean the Klingons.”

“This is what Starfleet wants from us. They do not get to shy away from it even if my actions offend their delicate sensibilities.”

“No, they do not," she agrees and steps aside to let him pass.

The way to the discreet camp they’ve set up nearby is a strip of constant motion. Time passes in a blur of clearing away rubble and moving bodies. The Mir’aaskian priestesses hover over the dead, murmuring to their gods, their once-elaborate headdresses ruined. Their eyes, identical bursts of violet, observe Khan each time he nears, but they do not disturb their chanting to speak to him.

Khan is assisting Spock, when Lakshmi calls.

" _Our injured are among the patients being beamed back onto the_ Enterprise _. You can see them briefly, but Sickbay will be too busy for you to stay_.”

"I'll be there.”

Frostier, she asks, “ _Has fortune given us a measure of revenge, my liege?_ ”

“Fortune didn’t need to,” he says. “We did it ourselves.”

" _I'm glad to hear it_ ,” Lakshmi says, cutting the line.

Spock needs no explanation beyond the scrap of conversation he has already overhead, so Khan presses at his communicator again. Mir'aask soon disappears for the more mundane sight of the transporter room and then Sickbay. Lakshmi waits at the entrance. She smells of blood and chemicals, death and survival.

Silently, she leads him to the bio-beds he wants to see. From Malik to Janaki, all the occupants are tranquil in their sleep and looking at them, Khan could almost believe that they are still in cryostasis and he is waking them for the first time.  _To a war that is not even yours_ , he had said to Malik all those days ago. The knowledge that his people can still die any day for something they had no part in instigating is like venom in his mouth.

Khan doesn't wait to be told to leave as if he is a thing underfoot. He walks out on his own, clasping Lakshmi's forearm in a show of gratitude as he goes past.  

His poor luck holds and the turbolift he calls for doesn’t arrive empty. Ignoring Kirk and his four officers, Khan selects the deck for his cabin and the ‘lift ascends, its near-undetectable hum awkwardly laid over an otherwise strained silence.

His deck is still the first deck they reach. Khan steps off; that his footsteps acquire a soft echo doesn’t come as a surprise. He turns around just as he reaches his door. "Why are you following me."

Kirk hurriedly jerks back to prevent a collision. "I heard your crewmembers are going to be all right. That's good news."

"Of course it is. It would hurt Starfleet's progress if they were unable to contribute."

Kirk frowns. "You think I'm only interested in what they can do for me?"

"Is that why you’re here? To prove otherwise?"

"The well-being of everybody aboard this ship is my responsibility. That includes your crew, includes you, and it's not a responsibility I'd ever neglect."

"I'm touched," Khan mutters.

Inside, he removes his shoes, pulls off his ruined shirt, dropping it carelessly onto the floor, and heads to the bathroom to clean his face and hands.

"All I'm saying is that, from one leader to another, I understand."

"It isn't as if I believed my people would never be harmed in battle."

"Doesn't mean you appreciate seeing it."

"No, but it has been dealt with."

"And it doesn't mean you're not still angry," Kirk replies knowingly.

It only serves to prod at the dulled rage in Khan's chest, stirring it with new life. "And if I am, Captain? What are you going to do about it? Or maybe it’s what  _I_  will do that concerns you?”

“This is different.”

“Oh, yes, this time, you sympathize,” Khan says scornfully. “In that case, are you here to provide  _comfort_?"

Kirk chuckles humorlessly. "I’ll leave that one to your crew, thanks. I wouldn't know where to begin and you’d bite my head off if I tried."

"I'm glad you understand.” Khan has no use for trite words and would rip at them until they were useless tatters at his feet. He returns to the room, finding Kirk standing in the centre. “Now leave.”

Kirk doesn’t seem to hear him. “You’re injured,” he notes, coming forward, reaching.

The tips of Kirk's fingers are gentle around the traces of the dull wounds, just ghostly impressions of warm pressure. It sets off something inside Khan. He snatches Kirk's wrist up in a tight fist, feels the bone feeble as chalk in his grip.

Kirk startles and then, very quickly, the surprise disappears. He watches Khan closely, searching, and makes no attempt to tug himself free.  "What are you going to do? Break my wrist?"

Khan could. It would take no effort. He could do  _so much_  to Kirk with no effort.

"What is it?" Kirk asks evenly, swaying closer. Their chests touch. Kirk’s heartbeat drums itself against Khan’s skin. "What do you want?" Kirk licks his lips, mouth taking on a small, wet sheen – it’s deliberate, has to be, a tactic, and it works: Khan’s eyes drop, dark heavy anger shifts into dark heavy hunger, and he hauls Kirk in the rest of the way.

A choked sound tumbles out of Kirk, his lips opening up. The taste of him fresh and tangy bursts across Khan’s tongue, drenches his mouth with flavor too compelling for him to do anything but devour Kirk’s mouth like it’s his final meal. Kirk goes with it readily, locking his free arm around Khan’s shoulders. “We shouldn’t. You’re injured—” but his gaze is sharp, completely aware of what he’s doing and saying  _do it_.

“ _Strip_ ,” Khan orders, relinquishing Kirk’s wrist, his mouth, too, albeit more unwillingly, "or I'll rip these clothes off your body and you will leave this room naked.”

"You’re lucky I can deal with how demanding you are,” Kirk says, his hands moving briskly, uncovering silky expanses for Khan’s palms to rove over. He finds bruises scattered over Kirk’s skin and it awakens fresh anger in him, the proprietary kind that wants to know _who did this_ , who harmed what belongs to him, but Khan already knows who, has already meted out the punishment across Mir’aask’s white sands.

He bends his head to suck at the nearest bruises, placing his own on top, and handles Kirk like a convenient plaything, lifts him off of his feet and pins him to the bulkhead beside the bedside drawer. "OK, that's still really hot," Kirk murmurs, squirming to test Khan's hold and moaning to find himself completely trapped. Observing him has taught Khan that being subjected to casual displays of power thrills Kirk, the edge of danger an aphrodisiac, drawing him in and not away.

His negligible weight allows Khan to support him with one arm while unfastening his trousers and letting them fall down to his feet, swiftly kicking them away. He almost doesn’t hear Kirk’s gruff, “You can spare five seconds to get some lube, it’s right there,” and nearly dismantles the drawer in his blind haste to open it. His patience is a gasoline thread lit on fire, burning through rapidly. It’s hard to see past this blinding desire Kirk incites in him.  

He prepares Kirk in quick, rough strokes – gratifying little gasps escape from Kirk, his hips twisting downwards eagerly – and slides what lube is left on his hand over his cock. Too fast and too hard, he pushes in, burying himself in one unforgiving slide. Kirk throws his head back, jaw tight, forcing a long, guttural, raw noise to remain behind the skin of his throat. He squeezes down on everywhere he has a grip on Khan, sweet pressure around his shoulders and his back and his cock, but he doesn’t say _wait_ , he doesn’t say _stop_.

Khan sets a relentless rhythm of hard and deep, hard and deep, that's nearly beyond his control, each thrust like a punch that Kirk viciously shoves himself down onto. Flushed pink, he’s in constant motion against Khan, shifting in restless search for more, heels kicking fitfully into Khan’s back, cock rubbing wet over Khan's skin. "Yeah, like that, like that," he growls, clawing his fingers across Khan’s shoulders, "fucking give it to me, hammer me into this wall."

“I could break you if I wanted to,” Khan snarls back. “I’d be too much for you, James. You wouldn’t survive it.” It’s scalding like an inferno inside him, the thought of discarding all restraint and unleashing the full force of himself onto Kirk, engulfing him in it entirely.

“Yeah, you would break me,” Kirk acknowledges with an exhilarated shiver. “Maybe I want you to, one day. Ever thought about that?” Whatever he sees on Khan’s face pulls Kirk’s mouth into a wicked smile. “Yeah, you want it, too. Want to make me take it,” low, seductive, a veritable siren’s song that flatters all of Khan’s ravenous impulses, “so come on, make me take it, Khan.” Khan shoves his hips forwards and cock deep without conscious thought and Kirk cries out, “ _Fuck, yes_.”

Somehow, there’s still enough rationality in Khan to know he can’t give Kirk the entirety of what he’s asking for, but he can give him something a little close to it, pressing himself in and out of Kirk again, again, again, a man possessed, a man possessive. “Come on my cock, James, or you won’t be coming at all.”

“Not gonna – be a – oh, God, that’s so fucking good – a problem,” Kirk manages before he breaks out into a melody of moans, lost to the sensations. His gaze grows dazed at last, mouth slackening. Sinking under the tide of his own pleasure, he is the most exquisite creature Khan has ever seen, but Khan doesn’t tell him so, just keeps fucking him through his climax.

“I know,” Kirk says with effort, weakly tugging at Khan’s head until Khan buries his face against Kirk’s throat, “Know you like the way I,” he has to pause, groaning from the overstimulation, “smell ‘specially when I come, so—” A ragged sound tears out of Khan. He mouths at hot, salty skin, licking hungrily, trying to taste that enthralling smell, imprint it on his tongue. It pulls at him the same way the perfect, convulsing clutch of Kirk’s body does, the same way it does to hear Kirk say, “You’re close, aren’t you. You’re gonna come in me, leave me so wet and full and dripping with it, I’m never gonna get it out of me." 

 _Kirk_ pulls at him, drags Khan into an orgasm that crashes and surges through him, a violent roar. It leaves nothing behind in its wake, only a comfortable hollowness. Khan relaxes into it, muscles softening, turning malleable. He keeps his face where it is against Kirk’s sweat-slick throat.

“Fu- _uuck_ ,” Kirk groans out, his chest still heaving. His attempt at a laugh is a noise all too full of air. “You sure know how to pound a guy. Feel any better now?”

"Is it a habit of yours to use sex in the name of fulfilling responsibility?”

“Oh, yeah, you're definitely feeling better.” Kirk sounds like he's smiling. Sounds good-humored.

Khan chooses to not to think about it. He lingers some more in his loose-limbed contentment, ignoring the disappointment swooping low in his stomach when his cock gradually slips out of Kirk.

Kirk makes a soft sound at finding himself empty, shifting against Khan. He turns his head the same moment Khan lifts his. Their lips brush, just a small, warm graze. Stay like that, faintly connected, for a long moment.  

Drawn by a strange compulsion, Khan leans in – or maybe Kirk does, and the graze grows into a firmer press. Grows into true kisses, a continuous string of them unraveling slowly, lazily. He finds Kirk’s unhurried tongue, strokes his thumbs over Kirk’s hipbones in time with their lazy twining. Kirk’s arms no longer clutch at him, sitting relaxed around Khan’s shoulders. He moans gently when Khan sucks leisurely at his plump bottom lip, runs fingers through Khan’s hair.

It’s too soft and unlike them, this thing unfolding between their lips. Stripped of their usual games and battles, now their mouths speak a far more delicate language, smoother and deeper, each kiss leading seamlessly into the next, on and on and on.

The chime at the door, the  _voice_ , hits like a thunderbolt.

“Khan? Jim? I know you're both in there."

Kirk rips his mouth away. His eyes widen, hands tightening on Khan’s shoulders.

Khan crushes the urge to ignore McCoy altogether and turn Kirk’s head back towards him to drink from his mouth again. He sets him down, hands staying on Kirk’s hips to steady him until Kirk draws back to the wall for support, a sharp grimace of discomfort on his face like maybe Khan did break something of him. His troubled gaze doesn’t move away from the door.

Khan looks down at the come splattered on his torso. They can wipe themselves clean and dress themselves again, but there’s little chance of hiding what has just happened. It’s clotted in the air; it’s painted in their flushed skin and swollen mouths, dripping down Kirk’s thighs.

“Are you going to lie?” he asks.

“No,” Kirk says. “He’s never asked me outright but if he does this time, I won’t deny it.” Louder, he says, “Hold on, Bones.”

Khan finds his discarded shirt, swiping it down his chest first before offering it to Kirk. “Better to use mine than anything of yours.”

Kirk dresses as fast as he can with his weak legs and sore muscles hindering him. He smoothes his hair down, says, “I’ll keep him outside, give you some space.”

Another inexplicable urge, now calling out to hold Kirk in place, steal one last taste, several last tastes, of his mouth. Khan crushes that one, too. “I won’t be lingering here. I’ll return to Mir’aask soon.”

“If you’re sure.” Kirk pauses at the door, glancing back. He wants something from Khan – some sort of signal, a nod, maybe. Khan gives it and Kirk composes himself and opens the door, stepping out immediately, talking over McCoy’s greeting.

Khan waits, but Kirk keeps his word and no one comes back through. Khan stands alone in a room where the silence is too loud and every inhalation is rich with Kirk’s scent. He breathes it in, lets the hot smell fill his lungs.

Then he exhales, throwing off the lassitude left behind from finding completion in Kirk’s body, moving beyond any hold it can have on him.

Kirk has served his purpose. Now Khan is in need of a sonic shower and fresh clothes. There is still work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Q: What are interplanetary distances? A: LOL, MY PLAYTHINGS. i r bad star trek fan, I admit it. I made up a lot of stuff about Ktaris and medical tech. Also, friends, my mind always goes ????!!!! when I have to think about the implications of KHAN'S SUPER POWERFUL BLOOD OF RESURRECTION, so it goes extra ????!!!! when I have to think about 72 people with the same kind of blood, so I limited that asap. 
> 
> 2) "People should either be caressed or crushed" - Niccolò Machiavelli, _The Prince_. Khan saw it listed in the 'suggested reading' section of a 'How to' guide for dictators and thought he’d give it a try. He ended up thinking Machiavelli was mostly an idiot, though, because he’s Khan, who isn't an idiot compared to him?
> 
> 3) “In this part of the story I am the one who / Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you / Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood,” from Pablo Neruda's 'I do not love you except because I love you'. Why does Jim know a love poem? Clearly so that he can one day connect with this dude he has Complicated Feelings towards and is secretly banging. Somewhere, Neruda is giving me the stink-eye bc “someone's deliberately misinterpreting my poem again” but come on, Pablo, that stanza isolated is perfect for Khan's feelings towards his crew. More importantly, #idowhatiwant.
> 
> 4) Not fic-relevant, but Star Trek Beyond! Did you guys enjoy it as much as I did?! My life is enriched by its existence and methinks I need to write an ode extolling the perfection of Jim Kirk. Or at least some Jim/Bones fic.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Title from "Conquest of Spaces" by Woodkid, because obviously only a song about SPACE can provide a title for a fic set in SPACE.
> 
> 2) "पानी खोजते/ दूर-देसावर सो आए थे वे/ पानी खोजते/ दूर-देसावर तक जाना था उन्हें" – "In search of water they had come from faraway lands / In search of water they had to go on to faraway lands", Kedarnath Singh, 'Cranes in the drought' (trans. by Nayi Kavita, I think). I'll have you know that Malik is an expert in numerous fields, including warfare, politics, physics, botany, and, most importantly, poems about birds. 
> 
> 3) Altered the line "I met a traveller from an antique land" from Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'Ozymandias', because, uh, Khan read some English Romantic poetry one day while he was taking a break from dictatorship?? [nervous laughter] (but lbr he'd totally think of himself "King of Kings" and presume the actual message of the poem would not end up applying to him, joke's on him obv.)
> 
> 4) Altered "I'll never pause again, never stand still/Till either death hath closed these eyes of mine/Or fortune given me measure of revenge" from Shakespeare's _Henry VI, Part 3_. Wow, that Khan sure likes his literary references, eh?!
> 
> 5) "A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it" – my #1 master of all things literary, Rabindranath Tagore. OOOH SPOCK GO GET SOME ICE FROM MCCOY TO APPLY TO THAT BURN.
> 
> 6) Alternate title for this fic is: Khan Has a Jolly Good Time Pissing People Off. What a babe. 
> 
> 7) Q: How many parts in total and when will Part 2 come out? A: I'm working with four parts in total right now, but it might be three. As for Part 2, I can offer no exact dates but I will be bashing my fingers against the keyboard in an attempt to finish it before the next blue moon. That's where the Khirk goodness begins, after all, wink wink nudge nudge.


End file.
